They governed the empire from Chengde, and received their foreign diplomats and representatives of vassal and tributary countries.

The Kangxi emperor restricted the admission to the forests and prairies of Rehe to the court's hunting expeditions and to the maintenance of the imperial cavalry.

To form a buffer zone between China proper and Japanese-controlled Manchukuo, the Imperial Japanese Army invaded Jehol in Operation Nekka on 21 January 1933.

The seizure of Jehol deteriorated relations between Japan and China, and was one of the incidents that led to the Second Sino-Japanese War.

After the Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War, establishment of the People's Republic of China, and enactment of pinyin in 1958, the area has retrospectively become known as Rehe Province.