<P> Wall construction continued until the demise of the Ming dynasty in 1644 . In the decades that led to the fall of the Ming dynasty, the Ming court and the Great Wall itself had to deal with simultaneous internal rebellions and the Manchu invasions . In addition to their conquest of Liaodong, the Manchus had raided across the Great Wall for the first time in 1629, and again in 1634, 1638, and 1642 . Meanwhile, the rebels led by warlord Li Zicheng had been gathering strength . In the early months of 1644, Li Zicheng declared himself the founder of the Shun and marched towards the Ming capital from Shaanxi . His route roughly followed the line of the Great Wall, in order to neutralize its heavily fortified garrisons . The crucial defences of Datong, Xuanfu, and Juyong Pass all surrendered without a fight, and the Chongzhen Emperor hanged himself on 25 April as the Shun army entered Beijing . At this point, the largest remaining Ming fighting force in North China was in Shanhai Pass, where the Great Wall meets the Bohai Sea . Its defender Wu Sangui, wedged between the Shun army within and the Manchus without, decided to surrender to the Manchus and opened the gates for them . The Manchus, having thus entered through the Great Wall, defeated Li Zicheng at the Battle of Shanhai Pass and seized Beijing on June 5 . They eventually defeated both the rebel - founded Shun dynasty and the remaining Ming resistance, establishing their rule over all of China as the Qing dynasty . </P> <P> Opinions about the Wall's role in the Ming dynasty's downfall are mixed . Historians such as Arthur Waldron and Julia Lovell are critical of the whole wall - building exercise in light of its ultimate failure in protecting China; the former compared the Great Wall with the failed Maginot Line of the French in World War II . However, independent scholar David Spindler notes that the Wall, being only part of a complex foreign policy, received "disproportionate blame" because it was the most obvious relic of that policy . </P> <P> The usefulness of the Great Wall as a defence line against northern nomads became questionable under the Qing dynasty, since their territory encompassed vast areas inside and outside the wall: China proper, Manchuria, and Mongolia were all under Qing control . So instead, the Great Wall became the means to limit Han Chinese movement into the steppes . In the case of Manchuria, considered to be the sacred homeland by the ruling Manchu elites, some parts of the Ming Liaodong Wall were repaired so it could serve to control Han Chinese movement into Manchuria alongside the newly erected Willow Palisade . </P> <P> Culturally, the wall's symbolic role as a line between civilized society and barbarism was suppressed by the Qing, who were keen to weaken the Han culturalism that had been propagated by the Ming . As a result, no special attention was paid to the Great Wall until the mid-Qing dynasty, when Westerners started to show interest in the structure . </P>

When was the great wall of china completed