Yongzheng Prohibition of Speech and Books Case

In 1728, scholar Zeng Jing, inspired by the anti-Manchu writings of deceased thinker Lü Liuliang, dispatched his student Zhang Xi to deliver a seditious letter to General Yue Zhongqi, urging rebellion against the Qing dynasty. Yue immediately reported the plot to Emperor Yongzheng, triggering a massive investigation. The emperor personally interrogated Zeng Jing, who recanted under the monarch’s persuasion. Yongzheng surprisingly pardoned Zeng and Zhang, but directed his fury at the long-dead Lü Liuliang: the corpse was exhumed and desecrated, his books were banned and burned, and his descendants were executed or enslaved. To justify his rule and the verdict, Yongzheng compiled the "Dayi Juemi Lu" (Record of Great Righteousness to Dispel Confusion), circulating it nationwide as a counter-propaganda text.

Zeng Jing and Zhang Xi were granted imperial pardon and released. Lü Liuliang was posthumously convicted, his remains mutilated, his writings systematically destroyed, and his family subjected to capital punishment or banishment. The judgment established a chilling precedent for treating ideological deviation as a capital crime.

The core dispute centered on the legitimacy of posthumous punishment for ideological dissent, the use of absolute imperial power to enforce intellectual conformity, and the paradoxical effect of the emperor’s own publication inadvertently amplifying the anti-Manchu arguments it sought to erase.

The case intensified the Qing literary inquisition, fostering an atmosphere of terror and self-censorship among scholars. The "Dayi Juemi Lu," however, preserved the dissident arguments it aimed to refute, later fueling anti-Qing sentiment. It starkly demonstrated the emperor’s role as supreme arbiter of truth, fusing judicial verdict with state propaganda and deepening the culture of imperial despotism.