White Lotus Rebellion, Chinese anti-Manchu uprising that occurred during the Ch'ing dynasty. It broke out (1796) among impoverished settlers in the mountainous region that separates Sichuan prov. from Hubei and Shaanxi provs. It apparently began as a tax protest led by the White Lotus Society, a secret religious society that forecast the advent of the Buddha, advocated restoration of the native Chinese Ming dynasty, and promised personal salvation to its followers. At first the Ch'ing administration, under the control of Ho-shen, sent inadequate and inefficient imperial forces to suppress the ill-organized rebels. On assuming effective power in 1799, however, Emperor Chia Ch'ing (reigned 1796-1820) overthrew the Ho-shen clique and gave support to the efforts of the more vigorous Manchu commanders as a way of restoring discipline and morale. A systematic program of pacification followed in which the populace was resettled in hundreds of stockaded villages and organized into militia. In its last stage, the Ch'ing suppression policy combined pursuit and extermination of rebel guerrilla bands with a program of amnesty for deserters. Although the Manchu finally crushed (1804) the rebellion, the myth of the military invincibility of the Manchu was shattered, perhaps contributing to the greater frequency of rebellions in the 19th cent.

Chinese Buddhist millenarian movement that was often persecuted because of its association with rebellion. The movement had roots in 4th-century worship of the Buddha Amitabha, whose devotional cult inspired Mao Ziyuan to form the White Lotus Society, a pious vegetarian group of monks and laity. By the 14th century it had developed into a millenarian sect that combined Maitreyan and Manichaean beliefs and was active in rebellions at the end of the Yuan dynasty. The society became most prominent through its role in the White Lotus Rebellion (1786–1804), a large-scale uprising in central China that contributed to the fall of the Qing dynasty. It was eventually put down by peasants organized into local militia defense corps. Later Chinese governments came to use the term White Lotus for all illegal millenarian groups. Some observers saw the Nian Rebellion of 1852 as well as the secret society behind the Boxer Rebellion as new manifestations of the White Lotus Society.

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