If it is determined by my standards, it will last forever. Then the emperor must leave something that has influenced generations to be worthy of these four words. And it has to be a good influence, that is to say, even a good emperor like Emperor Taizong can't do it, let alone Kangxi. No matter how great Tang Taizong's contribution was, his literary martial arts did not have such a great influence. The glory of the Tang Dynasty began to fade in just one hundred years. Kangxi was even more dissatisfied with time. When he was alive, the Qing dynasty was prosperous and peaceful, and it declined rapidly in the last years of Qianlong. So those emperors, no matter how good they are alive, have no influence on future generations.
Those who meet this condition need not count their fingers. Just two: Qin Shihuang and Han Wudi. If you insist on adding more, Emperor Wendi can count. If you still want it, then only the unqualified Zhu Yuanzhang (the time is too short).
There is no dispute about Hanwu in the Qin Dynasty. Qin Shihuang founded the emperor and powerful centralization, and this influence has been two thousand years. It still plays an important role. Not to mention Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, we can call the Han people because of him. These two emperors have penetrated into our bones. There is absolutely no dispute.
After that, Emperor Wendi was actually very powerful, just a little Qin Shihuang. It also unified China, which had been divided for 500 years, and created the Imperial Examination (controversial) and six departments in three provinces. This policy continued until the Qing dynasty, but in fact, the selection of civil servants everywhere was basically an examination, so the impact has reached the present. Whether he did it is indeed controversial, but it is undeniable that China has never been divided on a large scale since then. I mean, in people's minds, even division is the result of foreign invasion. The warlord pattern of China people for hundreds of years no longer exists.
Finally, Zhu Yuanzhang, I said that the time was not up to standard. But his influence is beyond our imagination. The impression of the feudal dynasty in our minds is all about his time. Imperial power is unparalleled. In fact, emperors have always had checks and balances in history. The Prime Minister and Ge Lao felt that the emperor had the right to withdraw the imperial edict if he said something wrong. Only in his time was the real imperial power dominant, and his abolition of the prime minister system laid the groundwork for the formation of the cabinet system in the future. Cabinets are also common in western countries, although they are different. But they all developed from the perfection of cabinet system in Ming Dynasty. So Zhu Yuanzhang scraped along.
No other emperor can deserve this title.