During his reign, he prosecuted Heshen, the corrupt favorite of his father and attempted to restore order within the empire while curbing the smuggling of opium into China.

Assessments of his reign are mixed, either seen as the "beginning of the end" of the Qing dynasty, or as a period of moderate reform that presaged the intellectual movements of the 1860s.

The Qianlong Emperor originally had two other sons in mind for succeeding him, but both of them died early from diseases, hence in December 1773 he secretly chose Yongyan as his successor.

[3] He was a traditionalist in terms of his role as an ethnic Manchu leader, taking parts in imperial hunts, inspection tours, and upholding strict court protocol.

[6] At the time, the Qing Empire faced internal disorder, most importantly the large-scale White Lotus (1796–1804) and Miao (1795–1806) rebellions, as well as an empty imperial treasury.

[13] The Jiaqing Emperor granted the title Wujing Boshi (五經博士; Wǔjīng Bóshì) to the descendants of Tang essayist Han Yu.

[18] He was a keen scholar of the Confucian classics (to which he devoted much of his time in the early years of his reign when the Qianlong Emperor remained de facto ruler), with 15,267 poems attributed to him.

[19] On 2 September 1820, the Jiaqing Emperor died at the Rehe (Jehol) Traveling Palace (熱河行宫), 230 km (140 mi) northeast of Beijing, where the imperial court was in summer quarters.

The Jiaqing Emperor was interred amidst the Western Qing Tombs, 120 km (75 mi) southwest of Beijing, in the Chang (昌; lit.