In 1616 Nurhaci declared himself the "Bright Khan" of the Later Jin state (Chinese: 後金國; pinyin: Hòu Jīn Guó; lit.

[3][4] In 1644 the Shunzhi Emperor established the dynastic capital in Beijing and was enthroned in the Forbidden City[5] shortly after the fall of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644).

[13] Scholar Yuanchong Wang emphasized that instead of focusing on the Manchu ethnic identity for the concept of "sinicization", he used the term "sinicization" in a different sense, in the hope to show how the Manchu regime, instead of the ethnic Manchus, promoted itself as the exclusively civilized Middle Kingdom or Zhongguo.

[15] Scholar Zhao Gang pointed out that the Qing emperors accepted their own Chinese identity, but it was not passive assimilation, as they actively changed old China from a Han-centered cultural notion to a multi-ethnic political entity; in other words, Manchu rulers gave a new meaning to the word "China" while becoming Chinese.

[16] After conquering China proper, the Manchus commonly called their state Zhongguo (Chinese: 中國; pinyin: Zhōngguó, lit.

The emperors equated the lands of the Qing state (including present day Northeast China, Xinjiang, Mongolia, Tibet and other areas) as Zhongguo (Dulimbai Gurun) in both the Chinese and Manchu languages, defining China as a multi-ethnic state, and rejecting the idea that Zhongguo only meant Han areas.

[17] When the Qing conquered Dzungaria in 1759, they proclaimed that the new land was absorbed into "China" (Dulimbai Gurun) in a Manchu-language memorial.

For example, Chinese geography textbooks published in the period gave detailed descriptions of China's regional position and territorial space.

[72] Apart from Zhongguo, the Qing court routinely used other terms as well in referring to its state in Chinese, such as guochao (國朝, lit.

For example, the Chinese version of the 1689 Treaty of Nerchinsk as inscribed in the border markers used Zhongguo as the state title: "All of the land to the south of the Xing’an mountains and all branches of the Heilong River belong to Zhongguo" (China), but in a different version of the same treaty, it was replaced by the term "our territory" (wojie): "All of the land ... belong to our territory" (wojie).

While the Manchu term ᡩᠠᡳ᠌ᠴᡳᠩ (Daicing) sounds like a phonetic rendering of Chinese Dà Qīng or Dai Ching, may in fact have been derived from a Mongolian word "ᠳᠠᠢᠢᠴᠢᠨ, дайчин" (daicin) that means "warrior".

The traditional Mongolian name for China is ᠬᠢᠲᠠᠳ (Хятад or Khyatad), which only refers to the areas of native (Han) Chinese.

[79][80] For example, in the Treaty of Thapathali of 1856 both Tibetans and Nepalese agreed to "regard the Chinese Emperor as heretofore with respect, in accordance with what has been written".

[81][82][83] The traditional Tibetan term for "China", རྒྱ་ནག་ (rgya nag, literally "vast black") was commonly used among Tibetans at the time, which generally referred to the areas of Han Chinese and Manchus in the east, and the term itself did not indicate any specific connection between Tibet and China (proper),[76] even though Tibet was subordinated to the Qing dynasty since the 18th century.

However, the counterpart for the name "Zhongguo" or "Dulimbai Gurun" (i.e. "China" in Chinese and Manchu languages) did appear in the Tibetan language as ཡུལ་དབུས། (yul dbus, literally "central land") which was used by Qing rulers like Qianlong Emperor in for example the Tibetan translation of the Śūraṅgama Sūtra he compiled in 1763 and the Tibetan-language inscription of his 1792 article The Discourse of Lama to refer to China (in the same sense as the Chinese term Zhongguo).

[87] The name "Chinese khagan" (Khāqān-i Chīn) referring to the Emperor of China as a symbol of power[88] appeared in medieval Persian literature works like the great 11th-century epic poem Shahnameh which were circulated widely in Xinjiang, and during the Qing dynasty the Turkic Muslim subjects in Xinjiang (and surrounding Muslim khanates like the Khanate of Kokand) associated the Qing rulers with this name and commonly referred to the Qing emperors as such.

[89] There are also derogatory names in some languages (mostly in Chinese and Mongolian) for the Qing, such as Mǎn Qīng (滿清/满清 or манж Чин, lit.

The Chinese representatives believed that Zhongguo (China) as a country name equivalent to "Great Qing" could naturally be used internationally, which could not be changed.