The Qianlong Emperor has commissioned the Siku Quanshu to demonstrate that the Qing dynasty can surpass the Ming dynasty's 1403 Yongle Encyclopedia, which was the world's largest encyclopedia at the time.

Variously translated as the Complete Library in Four Sections, Imperial Collection of Four, Emperor's Four Treasuries, Complete Library in Four Branches of Literature, or Complete Library of the Four Treasuries, it is the largest collection of books in Chinese history.

The editorial board includes three hundred and sixty-one scholars, with Ji Yun and Lu Xixiong as chief editors.

They had begun compilation in 1773 and complete it in 1782.

The editors have collected and annotated over ten thousand manuscripts from the imperial collections and other libraries, destroyed some three thousand titles, or works, that are considered to be anti-Manchu, and selected three thousand four hundred and sixty-one titles, or works, for inclusion into the Siku Quanshu.

They are bound in 36,381 volumes with more than  seventy-nine thousand chapters comprising about two point three million pages, and approximately eight hundred million Chinese characters.

Scribes have copied every word by hand, and according to Wilkinson (2000: 274), "The copyists (of whom there were 3,826) were not paid in cash but rewarded with official posts after they had transcribed a given number of words within a set time."

Four copies for the emperor are placed in specially constructed libraries in the Forbidden City, Old Summer Palace, Shenyang, and Wenjin Chamber, Chengde.

Three additional copies for the public are deposited in Siku Quanshu libraries in Hangzhou, Zhenjiang, and Yangzhou.

All seven libraries also receive copies of the 1725 imperial encyclopedia Gujin tushu jicheng.