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Gao Gong
Ming grand secretary from Xinzheng who ran the personnel ministry and led the cabinet under the Longqing Emperor, helping to settle peace and trade with Altan Khan
In a council hall, a long table holds an unrolled map scroll, a brass-cornered chest and a brush pot, with tall-backed chairs around it and a bronze lamp at the left; a figure stands with their back turned on the balcony at the right, with palace roofs beyond.
Also known as Zi Suqing · Hao Zhongxuan
- Roles
- Chief Ministers
Gao Gong, courtesy name Suqing, came from Xinzheng in Henan, passed the metropolitan examination in 1541 and spent years as a tutor to the Prince of Yu, the future Longqing Emperor. He entered the Grand Secretariat in 1566 but clashed with the senior grand secretary Xu Jie and retired under censorial attack in 1567. Recalled in the winter of 1569 to run the Ministry of Personnel as well, he reworked the rules for evaluating officials and took care over frontier commanders. As senior grand secretary from 1571 he worked with Zhang Juzheng and the governor-general Wang Chonggu to grant Altan Khan a title and open border markets. After the Wanli Emperor's accession in 1572 the eunuch Feng Bao, allied with Zhang Juzheng, persuaded the empresses dowager that Gao was overbearing, and he was dismissed. He died at home in 1578, received the posthumous name Wenxiang in 1602, and left a memoir of his fall, Last Words from a Sickbed (Bingta yiyan).
Life and times
Dates 1512 CE–1578 CE