Under the direction of the Qianlong Emperor, a massive team of editors completed the 'Siku Quanshu' (Complete Library of the Four Treasuries) in Beijing, China. This gigantic literary project compiled virtually all surviving Chinese scholarship into four main categories: Classics, History, Philosophy, and Belles-Lettres. While it preserved over 3,400 works in a uniform format, the project also acted as an aggressive weapon of state censorship, destroying thousands of books deemed anti-Manchu or subversive.

The 'Siku Quanshu' consolidated the classical Chinese poetic tradition, creating an absolute archive of historical verse structures. However, its strict state-enforced censorship suppressed radical poetic experimentation, forcing Qing dynasty poets to work safely within orthodox Neo-Confucian aesthetic boundaries.