Zhengde Emperor's Eunuchs Rule

1506

In Beijing, the eccentric Ming Zhengde Emperor handed routine government to the eunuch Liu Jin, who soon accumulated enough silver to rival the imperial treasury. Scholarly officials muttered in the Hanlin Academy. Ming Confucian governance, always precarious, was beginning its long decline toward dynastic exhaustion. Liu Jin's arrest in 1510 exposed enormous stockpiles of gold and silver, but did little to reform Ming governance's structural weaknesses.