Nice pun. But Yang Hu and his affiliates had an army of a hundred thousand at his peak, attacking Beijing itself in 1511 and pressuring the capital a few times even after their defeat. The rising spanned seven provinces, including parts of the Jiangnan. It was very much a crisis for the Ming. Sure, not as bad as Li, but again Li was also a product of the Manchu crisis.
The actual question is not whether the Ming could have survived in 1644 (unlikely) but whether the Ming could have survived the the 17th century without a Manchu menace, so I don't see what you're getting at here?
To be sure there were droughts and plagues, but ineffective Ming governments have previously somehow managed to suppress wide popular risings. The state of affairs in the 1630s and early 1640s does not show at all that a Ming decline was inevitable even without the Qing.
The rebellions will come, as they did intermittently throughout the Ming era. But can they topple the central authority of Beijing without the Ming essentially fighting a multi-front war?
The terminal Ming did in fact have many military leaders who were interested in reform. Some experimented with European-style forts, for example, until they realized that it was unsuitable for the terrain. Anyways I agree that the Chongzhen Emperor was a terrible emperor, but if he was a more competent ruler the Ming could have carried on even without reforming its rather ineffective system of rule.
I agree with you that the Zhengde rebellions were less serious than than the Li/Zhang rebellions. I was trying to prove that the Zhengde/Chongzhen rebellions weren't comparable: the Zhengde rebellions were smaller (also they never took any major cities). If your point had been that the Ming had survived prior peasant rebellions, I would have agreed. But I disagree with the notion that, because the Ming had survived smaller rebellions, they could survive the tumult of the Chongzhen rebellions where rebels roamed most of North China. The decay in the Ming is unprecedented: that's why the Ming are not likely to survive the 17th century. Let's say we cast a butterfly net and erase the Manchus after 1600. All of the other aspects of the Ming are retained: the inaction in the later half of the Wanli Emperor's reign, the short reign of his son, the factional purges in the Tianqi era, and then throw in the ecological disaster that marked the Chongzhen era. Combine that with all of the other issues of Ming governance I mentioned. Even without the Manchu threat, it becomes extremely likely in the above situation that the Ming do not survive the 17th century. It doesn't mean they must fall: let's say, in the most fortuitous series of events, great reformers (monarchs, civilian officials, and military officials) all take the stage, no natural disasters hit, the state effectively enacts relief measures if necessary, rebel leaders all die early, etc. Then in such a situation, the Ming will likely survive, even with a Manchu threat at the northeast. In other words, the Manchu threat does not necessarily mean the Ming fall (if everything else goes right). The lack of the Manchu threat does not mean the Ming's continued existence (if everything else goes wrong). The butterfly effect, of course, means that analysis either way quickly becomes impossible. However, the Ming in its late period lacked most of the things it needed to survive: it was bankrupt, had lost most of its legitimacy, had a poor military, and so forth. I think that the Ming is not likely to survive even without the Manchu threat, such that it will likely fall in northern China (a division of China between a Shun/Qing north and a Ming south is likely feasible even in 1644 though it might not last long).
The Ming's rebellions before 1644 had their roots not in the Manchu enterprise, but rather in the combination of natural disasters and ineffective government. The Qing threat just made the rebellions worse.
