On October 30, 1644, the boy emperor Shunzhi was formally enthroned in Beijing, and the Qing dynasty declared the city its capital, seven months after the Ming emperor had died in the fighting that ended the old dynasty. The court had been at Shengjing, the old Manchu capital in the north east, and the move to Beijing placed the new rulers in the administrative centre of the country. The ceremony was held in the palace that the Ming had built.
The way had been opened earlier in the year. A rebel army under Li Zicheng had taken Beijing in April 1644, and the last Ming emperor had hanged himself outside the city, and the Ming general Wu Sangui, who was holding the pass at Shanhaiguan, then let the Manchu forces through rather than submit, and the two sides defeated Li Zicheng together, and the Qing entered the capital in June. The young emperor followed in October. The move was made. The fighting went on in the south for years.
The new dynasty kept much of the machinery of the Ming state. The six ministries and the examination system were continued, and Chinese officials were kept in their posts, and the capital kept its walls, its temples and its water supply, and the Manchu ruling group added its own institutions and its own system of banners. The system was kept. The queue was imposed on Chinese men. Resistance held out in the south for some years, and the last organised Ming loyalists were not put down until the 1660s.
Beijing remained the capital for the rest of the dynasty, and its population and its buildings grew, and the palaces, the temple of heaven and the city walls were repaired and extended. The Qing ruled from the city until 1912, when the last emperor abdicated, and the Forbidden City and the other imperial buildings of the period are now among the best known monuments in China. The dynasty lasted.