Note a couple of things.The campaigns during Wanli’s reign wasn’t actually that expensive(by the standards of other dynasties).It was only expensive by the standards of the late Ming Dynasty.Even at the height of the Korean War,only 60,000 Ming soldiers were sent to Korea.By Chinese standards,this would be a miniscule number of soldiers—yet for some reason the empire was almost bankrupt deploying this army.Campaigns in early Ming Dynasty deployed several hundreds thousand soldiers.The fact that the state was almost bankrupt after deploying such a small number of soldiers is evidence that the quality of the state’s administration has been seriously eroded.It did not help that Wanli,under the influence of his corrupt government officials, reversed the reforms of Zhang Juzheng,despite its’ success in bringing surplus to the treasury.That and the fact that his heirs in generally were poorly educated and thus easily manipulated by court officials.Tianqi actually wasn’t an idiot. The eunuchs endorsed by him actually succeeded in bringing much needed income to the treasury.The fact that he got a bad reputation had a lot to do with the fact that he endorsed eunuchs who persecuted the court officials.Frankly,a lot of the court officials who got persecuted deserved what they got.I would agree with the Timu Crisis for the first chink in the Ming Dynasty armor; but I would put it sometime in the Wanli Emperor. Wanli had many headaches - fighting the Mongols, the Japanese invasion of Korea, fighting a Rebellion, his opium habit, and then came the assassination attempt on the palace grounds. Due to these factors, Wanli outright quit from his government. His successors were let us say - idiots. (I do not count Taichang Emperor as a successor of Wanli, his reign was too short to even have an effect other than putting his idiot successor on the throne.)
As for the decline of the Qing... Qianlong Emperor's early abdication was the start.
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