"}Wu [a guy who was starting a rebellion against the Qing] offered Emperor Kangxi an amnesty if he would only leave Chinese soil altogether and found a new kingdom in Manchuria and Korea. Predictably, Kangxi refused, and to underscore his anger he executed Wu\u2019s son, who was being held hostage in Peking.
I have a take, which is that if you\u2019re going to take someone\u2019s kid as a political hostage, you should send them back home for about three weeks a year so that the family can become emotionally re-attached to the kid. This has the ~upside that if they refuse to send the kid back, it\u2019s a pretty good indicator that trouble is brewing.