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The Qing Emperors adopted a multigenerational offensive strategy towards the western Dzunghar Mongols that led to their absorption of outer Mongolia during the reign of Kangxi (they possessed inner Mongolia prior to his campaigns), Qinghai-Kokonor during the reign of the Yongzheng Emperor and Xinjiang and Tibet during the reign of Qianlong. The conquest of Tibetan areas was linked in Qing strategy to its anti-Mongol agenda because of the religious and tea-trade ties between Mongol and Tibetan lama buddhists. In Qianlong's final western campaigns destroying the Dzunghar empire and expanding in to Xinjiang (and much of today's eastern Kazakhstan, Kyrgyztan and Tajikistan), the Qing dynasty implemented a genocide against the Dzhungar Mongols and ensured most living Mongols were placed under Qing authority.

In the process, China began to take the "begonia flower" shape it has to this day.

This aggressive approach was one way to deal with China's recurring problems with steppe nomads, but other models had been used in the past, including appeasement, trade or sporadic rather than persistent offensives.

WI the Qing were not committed to such a total and expansive "solution" to the Mongol problem as in OTL?

Would the Lama Buddhist Mongols remain a major component of the the population of current day Xinjiang and retain political overlordship of many of the Muslims of eastern Turkestan to this day?

Would the Qing empire have cause to regret its restraint, and could the Dzhungars have grown into a larger threat interested in massive raids or even conquest of China? Or might the Dzhungar territory have fallen to the Russians in the 19th century instead?

From my reading on the Dzhungar wars, it seems to me that Qianlong's final campaigns were most characterizable as "wars of choice", not a reaction to attack, but an opportunity to crush the Dzunghars once and for all. Yongsheng's war was a bit more provoked by Mongol activities, and Kangxi may have had more genuine concern of subversive Dzhungar influence on the Khalka Mongols it governed and consequently for the security of northern China and Manchuria.

So is the Qing dynasty better off or worse off in most respects if it never undertakes its huge offensives from the 1690s on, or if it ceases the campaigns after Kangxi's lifetime?

Could the lack of western campaigns have given the Qing any better chance at maintaining prosperity for its growing population, or for expansion in other directions? For instance, Qianlong's 1770s campaigns against Annam and Burma failed, but if Kangxi, Yongsheng or Qianlong had attempts southward conquest in their respective primes before 1760, might have made relatively enduring extensions to China in that direction?
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