Kangxi (1662 – 1722), the second ruler of the Manchu Qing dynasty (1644 – 1911) turned Beijing into a center of learning, striving in particular to integrate Western learning with Chinese learning, and the sciences with scholarship. At the same time, when Louis XIV sent Jesuit mathematicians to the emperor of China in 1685, his intention was to turn the Royal Science Academy in Paris into a center towards which knowledge from all over the world, including China, was to converge; this turned Beijing into a relay point on a world map centered in Paris. The imperial capital thus played a role in two projects of construction of universal knowledge, configured very differently. Some exchanges between the two projects did occur, bearing witness to the mutual recognition of some of the new products of the circulation of knowledge.