 The Hongwu Emperor ( ruled 1368 – 98 ) attempted to create a society of self @-@ sufficient rural communities ordered in a rigid , immobile system that would guarantee and support a permanent class of soldiers for his dynasty : the empire 's standing army exceeded one million troops and the navy 's dockyards in Nanjing were the largest in the world . He also took great care breaking the power of the court eunuchs and unrelated magnates , <unk> his many sons throughout China and attempting to guide these princes through the Huang Ming Zu Xun , a set of published dynastic instructions . This failed spectacularly when his teenage successor , the Jianwen Emperor , attempted to curtail his uncles ' power , prompting the <unk> Campaign , an uprising that placed the Prince of Yan upon the throne as the Yongle Emperor in 1402 . The Yongle Emperor established Yan as a secondary capital and renamed it Beijing , constructed the Forbidden City , and restored the Grand Canal and the primacy of the imperial examinations in official appointments . He rewarded his eunuch supporters and employed them as a counterweight against the Confucian scholar @-@ bureaucrats . One , Zheng He , led seven enormous voyages of exploration into the Indian Ocean as far as Arabia and the eastern coasts of Africa . 
