He Shen was a great corrupt official during the Qianlong era, arguably the most famous corrupt official in Chinese history.
Heshen was born in the 15th year of the Qianlong era (1760). Although he was born into an official family, his life was filled with hardship. When Heshen was three years old, his mother died from complications during childbirth. Six years later, his father also passed away from illness. Orphaned at a young age, Heshen could only rely on his younger brother Helin to survive.
Heshen was handsome in appearance and proficient in four languages: Manchu, Chinese, Mongolian, and Tibetan. At the age of nineteen, he failed the imperial civil service examination. After that, he joined the Qing army, starting as a low-ranking soldier, and through continuous promotions, he entered the palace to serve. Heshen was a man who knew how to seize opportunities; during his time in the palace, he took every chance to showcase himself before the emperor in order to rise higher.
It is said that one time, Emperor Qianlong was reading the Mencius and, without realizing it, the sky grew dark. Unable to clearly see the annotations in the book, he ordered Heshen, who was attending to him nearby, to light a lamp. Seizing the opportunity, Heshen asked which annotation the emperor wished to see, and upon receiving the answer, he recited all the annotations in the book from memory, earning great praise from Qianlong. In the end, Heshen got what he wanted, gaining the emperor's favor and formally embarking on his official career.
At the age of thirty, Heshen was promoted by Emperor Qianlong to Minister of Revenue for his great merit in investigating and handling the corruption case of Li Shiyao, the Governor-General of Yunnan and Guizhou. During the process of investigating Li Shiyao's case, Heshen ultimately could not resist the temptation of money and secretly embezzled a considerable amount of property from Li Shiyao and his accomplices. Having tasted the sweetness of illicit gains, Heshen from then on embarked on the irreversible path of corruption and amassing wealth.
At this time, Heshen held immense power and was highly favored by the emperor, and he fully exploited these conditions to begin accepting bribes within the court and amassing wealth on a grand scale. To further satisfy his greed, he proposed to Emperor Qianlong the establishment of a system called "penalty silver," which allowed officials to pay a fine to avoid punishment for their crimes, with the amount determined by the severity of their offenses. The renowned scholar Ji Xiaolan was once convicted and ordered by Emperor Qianlong to be exiled to the frontier, but by paying the penalty silver, he avoided formal punishment. The creation of the penalty silver system not only filled Emperor Qianlong's coffers but also brought substantial profits to Heshen. While amassing wealth in the court, Heshen also extensively built his own faction, making him not only as wealthy as a nation but also powerful enough to dominate the entire imperial court.
During Qianlong's reign, he always showed great favor toward Heshen, because Heshen was exceptionally skilled at flattery and reading the emperor's mind. For instance, knowing that Qianlong was a devoted son who treated the Empress Dowager with great filial piety, Heshen did everything he could to curry favor with her. When the Empress Dowager passed away, Heshen even stayed by Qianlong's side, weeping bitterly for several consecutive days.
Because Emperor Qianlong had always shielded Heshen during his lifetime, it was not until the fourth year of the Jiaqing era (1799), after the death of the retired Emperor Qianlong, that Emperor Jiaqing formally ordered Heshen to be punished and his property confiscated.
Emperor Jiaqing enumerated Heshen's crimes one by one: first, when Qianlong appointed Jiaqing as crown prince, Heshen leaked the news to Jiaqing in advance to curry favor; second, Heshen rode a horse within the Yuanmingyuan; third, Heshen entered and exited the Shenwu Gate by sedan chair; fourth, Heshen took a palace maid who had left the imperial service as his concubine; fifth, during the outbreak of the White Lotus Rebellion in Sichuan and Hubei, Heshen suppressed military intelligence reports and failed to submit them; sixth, while Emperor Qianlong was gravely ill, Heshen showed no sign of grief but instead chatted and laughed cheerfully with others... and so on, listing a total of twenty major offenses.
Additionally, Heshen was found to possess 3,000 houses, 8,000 hectares of farmland, 60,000 taels of pure gold, and various other assets, totaling 800 million taels of silver. At the time, the Qing government's annual treasury revenue was only between 60 to 70 million taels of silver, meaning the wealth Heshen had embezzled could equal the total fiscal income of the Qing government for 15 years—a truly rare occurrence in Qing history. Hence, a saying spread among the people: "When Heshen falls, Jiaqing is full."
During the Lantern Festival of the fourth year of the Jiaqing era, the Jiaqing Emperor sent a white silk sash to Heshen. After Heshen's death, a large number of his followers were implicated, but only his eldest son, Fengshen Yinde, was spared as the son-in-law of the Qianlong Emperor.