Effectivity of the Ch’ing Mongol Code (Meng-ku li 蒙古例)
35th Annual Meeting of the PIAC, 1992
Legally the Great Ch’ing Empire was ruled by a collection of separate codes, each of which specifically applied to one of its ethnic territorial components. The Great Ch’ing Code (Ta Ch’ing lü li 大淸律例) was effective only in the cases involving the Chinese subjects in China, while the Manchus were governed by the Eight Banner Code (Pa ch’i tse li 八旗則例), the Muslim inhabitants of East Turkestan by the Muslim Territory Code (Hui chiang tse li 回疆則例)，the Tibetans in Tibet by the Tibetan Code (Hsi Tsang shih li 西藏事例)，and the Mongols in Mongolia by the Mongol Code (Meng-ku li 蒙 古例). The last two were later combined to make up the Code of the Court of Colonial Affairs （Li fan yuan tse li 理藩院則例).
None of the very few death sentences for Mongols that ever came up for the autumnal review (ch’iu shen 秋審）at the imperial court was commuted, strongly suggesting the process was no more than a formality before actual execution. Moreover it seems highly significant that all the Mongols involved in those cases were Imperial Household Mongols (nei shu Meng-ku 內屬蒙古): Chakhars 察哈爾 and Köke Khota Tiimeds 歸化城土默特. It is reasonable to conclude that in the Ch’ing times Mongolia and the Mongols wrer more or less autonomous within the legal framework of the Manchu empire.