Under the Qianlong Emperor 's reign , the Dzungar Khanate was incorporated into the Qing Empire 's rule and renamed Xinjiang , while to the west , Ili was conquered and garrisoned . The incorporation of Xinjiang into the Qing Empire resulted from the final defeat and destruction of the Dzungars ( or Zunghars ) , a coalition of Western Mongol tribes . The Qianlong Emperor then ordered the Dzungar genocide . According to the Qing dynasty scholar Wei Yuan , 40 % of the 600,000 Dzungars were killed by smallpox , 20 % fled to the Russian Empire or Kazakh tribes , and 30 % were killed by the Qing army , in what Michael Edmund Clarke described as " the complete destruction of not only the Zunghar state but of the Zunghars as a people . " Historian Peter Perdue has argued that the decimation of the Dzungars was the result of an explicit policy of massacre launched by the Qianlong Emperor
Dzungar genocide
Dzungar genocide
Qianlong Emperor