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The early 17th century marked the nadir of the Ming Dynasty. What was once the mightiest empire on Earth founded by the unscrupulous peasant upstart named Zhu Yuanzhang was plagued by a multitude of economic, political, and military threats. Famine and uneven distribution of wealth plagued much of the western and northern part of the country. Corruption and deceit infiltrated the political system at every level. Armed groups from the inside and outside of the empire threatened its demise. All three of these factors were linked together, but ultimately it was the military factor that brought the demise of the Ming Empire.

During the 1500s and early 1600s, in addition to political problems military reverses also visited upon the Ming Empire. Ever since the reign of the Yongle Emperor, the Ming state had been combating its Mongol enemies to the north. Although by this time the various Mongol tribes were weakened and divided, nothing comparable to the unified Mongol horde of the old days of Genghis Khan, they still posed military (and simultaneously political and economic) problems to the Ming. In addition, when the Ming entered the 1600s they just came out of a war with Japan in defense of Korea. Although in the end Japan was driven out of Korea, a Ming tributary state, the war nevertheless shown serious weaknesses with the Ming military, which on occasions met reverses with the numerically inferior enemy. In addition, attacks by pirates based in Japan (but mostly ethnic Chinese) also add another burden to the ailing Ming state. However, in the end the mortal threats of the Ming were not the Mongols or the Japanese, rather the new threats that emerged in the early 1600s inside and outside of the Ming state.

In the early 1600s, droughts and famines wrecked the already poverty-ridden provinces of Henan, Shaanxi (during the Ming Dynasty, Shaanxi province also include Gansu and Ningxia), and Shanxi. Coupled with government apathy, those factors provided the major reasons and motivations for many starving peasants to turn to rebellion. For some time, the government forces were able to suppress the local rebellions, but by the 1640s, those local rebellions have escalated into much more threatening dimensions.

At the same time, a Ruzhen (or Jurchens) tribal leader named Nurhaci of the Aisin Gioro (1) clan took the role of the Genghis Khan of the Ruzhen. Previously in Chinese history, the Ruzhen is a Tungustic tribe in Manchuria that invaded North China in the 11th century and established the Jin Dynasty. After Genghis Khan's Mongols conquered the Jin, the Ruzhens were scattered, with some returning to their former tribal lives in southern and central Manchuria. During the Ming Dynasty, the Ruzhen tribes remained divided, some giving tributes to the Ming and some even provide mercenaries for the Ming. In any case, the ambitious Nurhaci united the Ruzhen tribes and established the Hou Jin (Latter Jin) state in 1616, in clear defiance to Ming hegemony. From then on, intermittent wars occupied both states.