理藩院
The Qing emperors governed frontier non-Han areas in a separate administrative system under the Lifan Yuan. Nonetheless, it was the Qing emperors who expanded the definition of "Zhongguo" and made it "flexible" by using that term to refer to the entire empire. "Zhongguo" was also used by the Qing Empire as an endonym in diplomatic correspondence. However, some Han subjects criticized their usage of the term and used "Zhongguo" only to refer to the seventeen provinces of China and three provinces of the east (Manchuria), excluding other frontier areas. Han literati who remained loyal to the Ming dynasty held to defining the old Ming borders as "China" and used the term "foreigner" to describe ethnic minorities under Qing rule, such as the Mongols, as part of their anti-Qing ideology. As the territorial borders of the Qing Empire were fixed through a series of treaties with neighboring foreign powers, it was able to inculcate in the Qing subjects a sense that China included areas such as Mongolia and Tibet due to educational reforms. Specifically, the educational reform made it clear where the borders of the Qing Empire were, even if Han subjects did not understand how the Chinese identity included Mongols and Tibetans or understand what the connotations of being "Chinese" were.