The transition from Ming to Qing, also known as the Manchu conquest of China or Ming-Qing transition, was a decades-long period of conflict between the Qing dynasty, established by the Manchu Aisin Gioro clan in Manchuria, and the Ming dynasty in China proper and later in South China. Various other regional or temporary powers were also involved in this conflict, such as the short-lived Shun dynasty. In 1618, before the start of the Qing conquest, Nurhaci, the leader of the Aisin Gioro clan, commissioned a document titled the Seven Grievances, in which he listed seven complaints against the Ming, before launching a rebellion against them. Many of the grievances concerned conflicts with the Yehe, a major Manchu clan, and the Ming's favoritism toward the Yehe at the expense of other Manchu clans. Nurhaci's demand that the Ming pay tribute to address the Seven Grievances was effectively a declaration of war, as the Ming were unwilling to pay money to a former vassal. Shortly thereafter, Nurhaci began to rebel against the Ming in Liaoning, a region in southern Manchuria. At the same time, the Ming dynasty was struggling to survive amid increasing fiscal troubles and peasant rebellions. On April 24, 1644, Beijing fell to a rebel army led by Li Zicheng, a former minor Ming official who became the leader of the peasant revolt. Li then proclaimed the Shun dynasty. At the time of the city's fall, the last Ming emperor, the Chongzhen Emperor, hanged himself on a tree in the imperial garden outside the Forbidden City. As Li Zicheng advanced toward him with his army, the general Wu Sangui, tasked by the Ming with guarding one of the gates of the Great Wall, swore allegiance to the Manchus and allowed them to enter China. Li Zicheng was defeated at the battle of Shanhai Pass by the combined forces of Wu Sangui and the Manchu prince Dorgon. On June 6, the Manchus and Wu entered the capital and proclaimed the young Shunzhi Emperor as the new Emperor of China. However, the conquest was far from complete, and it took nearly forty more years before all of China was firmly united under Qing rule. The Kangxi Emperor ascended the throne in 1661, and in 1662 his regents initiated the Great Clearance to defeat the resistance of Ming loyalists in South China. He then fought several rebellions, such as the revolt of the Three Feudatories, led by Wu Sangui, which broke out in southern China in 1673. He subsequently launched a series of campaigns that expanded his empire. In 1662, the general Koxinga expelled Dutch colonists and founded the Kingdom of Tungning in Taiwan, a Ming loyalist state, with the aim of reconquering China. However, Tungning was defeated in 1683 at the battle of Penghu by Admiral Shi Lang, who had previously served under Koxinga. The fall of the Ming dynasty resulted from a combination of factors. Kenneth Swope argues that a key factor was the deterioration of relations between the Ming royalty and the military leaders of the Ming Empire. Other factors include repeated military expeditions in the north, inflationary pressures caused by excessive spending by the imperial treasury, natural disasters, and epidemics. A peasant rebellion in Beijing in 1644 and a series of weak emperors contributed to the chaos. The Ming power survived for years in what is now southern China, though it was ultimately defeated by the Manchus. Source: Wikipedia (en)