Dongfang Bubai

Dongfang Bubai was the first Emperor of the Chinese Xiang Dynasty. He was born as Guo Jing in 1774. He was the son of a Han Chinese Minister in the Qing Court. In 1796, the White Lotus Society, a secret patriotic Han Chinese society, started a revolt in Guangzhou against the Manchu Qing Dynasty. Led by Li Hongzhi and Cao Qingxu, the rebel armies captured by 1800 all of Southern China.
In 1797, at the age of 23, Guo Jing became General of the Qing forces in Shandong as his predecessor had been killed while repulsing a White Lotus Offensive. Taking advantage of the collapse of the Qing Empire, Guo Jing rebelled against his government and in July 1800 he captured Beijing, pushing the Manchus back to Manchuria. He then declared himself Emperor of the newly established Xiang Dynasty and took the dynastic title Dongfang Bubai, which translates as "Undefeated East".
In 1802, Dongfang Bubai invaded White Lotus held Southern China and by 1805, all of China had been unified under the Xiang Dynasty. In order to cleanse Southern China from White Lotus Society members, in 1806 he started the "Great Purge" and massacred more than 600,000 civilians who where considered to be either members of the Society or sympathetic to it.
For the next few decades, Dongfang Bubai established his rule all over the country and crushed rebellions. One such rebellion was the Manchu revolt of 1836. In Jinzhou in Manchuria, a man called Guo Tang and who claimed to descent from the Tang Dynasty demanded that Jinzhou be given independence.
Dongfang Bubai gave an ultimatum of 3 days for the rebels to surrender. Following the government's ultimatum, many separatists decided to go home. As the deadline of the ultimatum approached, Guo Tang was assassinated during a military parade in the streets of Jinzhou by the former mayor of the city.
In the same year, Dongfang Bubai started a passionate affair with the beautiful concubine Yang Ling. The Emperor started to prefer her company over that of others concubines and rewarded her brother, Yang Kang, with the office of Commander of the Imperial Army.
The couple traveled extensively to Southern China in the next few years, but rumors that Dongfang Bubai planned to crown his lover Empress caused the reaction of the Confucians and the Aristocracy and the Emperor abandoned his plans.
Meanwhile, the Great Xiang Empire became quite stable and the Dynasty's rule over China solidified. With China secure, the Emperor began an effort to modernize the country, giving the USA the title of the Most Favorite Trade Partner in 1840, in exchange for American help in the Westernization of the country, which included American officers training in the Western way of warfare the Chinese army.This effectively gave USA merchants monopoly over Chinese goods such as tea, porcelain and silk. 
The Emperor also appointed his cousin, Imperial Prince Chen Jialuo, as Minister of Barbarian Affairs, in order to establish communication and with other Western countries, especially since the Holy Roman Empire established that year a colony in Southern Korea.