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Literary Inquisition (Chinese: 文字獄 wénzìyù "imprisonment due to writings") (or Speech crime Chinese:以言入罪) refers to official persecution of intellectuals for their writings in Imperial China. Wénzìyù flourished during the Ming and Qing dynasties. Such persecutions could owe even to a single phrase or word which the ruler considered offensive. Some of these owed to the naming taboo. In a serious case, not only the writer but also his immediate and extended families would be killed.

Pre-Ming

There were wénzìyù before the Ming and Qing dynasties. The poet Su Shi of the Song Dynasty was jailed for several months by the emperor owing to some of his poems. In the bandit novel Water Margin, which has its setting in the Song Dynasty, the leading character Song Jiang, originally a petty official, became the head of a bandit group after he was sentenced to death for a poem he had written during his drunkenness.

Ming

The Ming Dynasty founder Zhu Yuanzhang, who had a humble beginning, caused many wénzìyù.

Qing

The Qing rulers, who were sensitive to anti-Manchu feelings among the Han Chinese, also carried out many wénzìyù, including the so-called "Case of the History of the Ming Dynasty" (明史案) in 1661-1662 under the direction of regents (before Emperor Kangxi came in power in 1669) in which about 70 were killed and more exiled.

Under the Qing, literary inquisition began with isolated cases in Shunzhi and Kangxi times, then evolved into a pattern. There were 53 cases of literary persecution during Qianlong's reign.

• 1753: The Qianlong emperor's frequent tours of Jiangnan were partly funded by local governments, and therefore indirectly by the local people. One local official by the name of Lu Lusen, using a higher ranking minister's name, Sun Jiajin, sent a memorial to Qianlong pleading with him to stop the tour for the sake of the local people. The text achieved widespread popular support. Eventually Lu Lusen was sentenced to death by slow slicing for sedition, his two sons were beheaded, and more than a thousand relatives and acquaintances were either executed, exiled, or thrown into jail according to the notion of "collective responsibility" that automatically applied in cases of sedition.

• 1755: A Provincial Education Commissioner named Hu Zhongzao (胡中藻) wrote a poem in which the character qing 清, the name of the dynasty, was preceded by zhuo 浊, which means "murky or muddy." The Qianlong emperor saw this and many other formulations as the taking of a position in the factional struggle that was taking place at the time between Han official Zhang Tingyu and Manchu official Ertai, who had been Hu's mentor. Hu was eventually beheaded.

• 1778: The son of a Jiangsu poet called Xu Shukui (徐述夔) had written a poem to celebrate his late father. Qianlong decided that the poem was derogatory towards the Manchus, and ordered that Xu Shukui's coffin be unearthed, his corpse mutilated, all his children and grandchildren beheaded.

• Cai Xian (蔡顯) wrote a poem 'Any color not true color but red color, alien flowers has become king flowers', to show that he preferred red colored peonies over purple peonies, and stating 'red peony is king peony' and 'Other color peonies are aliens'. In Chinese, 'red' and the surname of late Ming dynasty emperors shared the same character: 朱 (zhū). Qianlong then accused the poet of trying to attack the Manchus by innuendo and ordered the beheading of the poet.

The Siku quanshu and censorship

The censorship campaign that was associated with the compilation of the Siku quanshu was responsible for the destruction of 151,723 volumes (Chinese: 部). At least 63,000 of these were supplied by two big book-collecting agencies established by the government in Jiangsu (Chinese: 江苏省) between 1770 and 1780. Grounds for the destruction of books included:

1. Hostility or disrespect to Qing emperors after 1644.
2. Insults to previous non-Han Chinese dynasties that might be considered related to the Qing.
3. Presentation of inflammatory chronicles of the Qing conquest of China.
4. Presence of geographical information related to the frontiers or the coast which might assist rebels.
5. As an afterthought (beginning at the end of 1780), censorship or destruction of the scripts of popular plays for vulgar language as well as for anti-Manchu references.
6. Being literary products of prominent opponents of the dynasty, such as Lü Liuliang (1629–1683).
7. Reflecting a very old motive in Chinese history, they could be condemned if they indecently questioned established interpretations of the Confucian classics.

The inquisition was often used to express local ambitions and rivalries that had little to do with the ruler's own political interests. It thus generated interclass, as well as intraclass, warfare. For example, commoners could lay charges against scholars.

See also

Treason by the Book

Notes

1. Jinyong used this case as a prologue for his novel The Deer and the Cauldron.
2. KAM C. WONG (25 March 2002). "Black's Theory on the Behavior of Law Revisited IV: the Behavior of Qing Law". Science Direct. Retrieved 2008-12-22.
3. "'Kang-Qian shengshi' de wenhua zhuanzhi yu wenziyu" “康乾盛世”的文化專制與文字獄 , in Guoshi shiliujiang 國史十六講 . Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2006. Retrieved on 10 November 2008.
4. R. Kent Guy. (1987). The Emperor's Four Treasuries: Scholars and the State in the Late Ch'ien-lung Era (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), p. 32.
5. J.D. Schmidt (2003), Harmony Garden: The Life, Literary Criticism, and Poetry of Yuan Mei (1716-1798), New York and London: Routledge, p. 370.
6. The Cambridge History of China, by Willard J. Peterson, John K. Fairbank, Denis Twitchett Page 290
7. The Cambridge History of China, by Willard J. Peterson, John K. Fairbank, Denis Twitchett Page 291

References

• Luther Carrington Goodrich, The Literary Inquisition of Ch'ien-Lung. Baltimore: Waverly Press, 1935; New York: Paragon Book Reprint Corp., 1966.
• Zhongguo da baike quanshu. First Edition. Beijing; Shanghai: Zhongguo da baike quanshu chubanshe. 1980-1993.

• Censorship
• History of Imperial China
• Ming Dynasty
• Qing Dynasty
• Anti-intellectualism