Hou Ming (Long live the Qing)

The Great Ming Empire (Da Ming), unofficially dubbed as the later Ming (Hou Ming) or Southern Chinese Empire (Nan Zhongguo Huangdiguo) is the second Chinese state that arose after the Chinese Civil War. Its territory includes the Yangtze area (e.g. Jiangsu, Jiangxi, Hubei, Hunan etc.), as well as Central Southern China, Sichuan, Yunnan, Fujian (including Taiwan) and the two Guang. Major harbors are OTL'S Xiamen, Shanghai and Guangzhou, while Nanjing serves as the capital. The Empire of Vietnam accepts is vassal status towards the Ming emperor, while the intervention of 1898 has turned the Philippines into a Chinese dependency. Tibet is Hou Ming's only protectorate. Hou Ming's peculiar form of government is quite remarkable, and so is its legitimation. Claiming that a lost descendant of the Zhu family has been found and that this imperial heir should reclaim the Celestial Mandate, a clique of generals initiated a rebellion which was also supported by occult groups and aggressive Han nationalists. Whether Zhu Bianhong was really related to the Ming Imperial family remains a mystery to this day, but most of the Qing troops deserted or joined the Ming banners. In 1855, the conquest of Southern China was complete, but Da Shun blocked any expansion to the North. After several unsuccessful skirmishes, both sides signed the armistice of 1857, although no side accepted each other as the official representative of China. The relatively swift conquest was indeed beneficial for Hou Ming; neither were any cities destroyed nor the countryside devastated. The new capable administration successfully ended Qing corruption, and with the enormous state coffers, the lives of the peasants were somewhat eased. Unlike Da Shun, Hou Ming is a constitutional monarchy with a system very similar to that of Imperial Germany. Foreign trade policies are very liberal.