The Sui, Tang and Song Dynasties
Bloody road to the Sui Dynasty | The Sui and Tang Dynasties | Conceit and Military Weakness under the Song Dynasty
East Asia, 1200 CE
Bloody Road to the Sui Dynasty...
As elsewhere, dynastic authoritarian rule had been a misfortune for China, with war and bloodshed often the means of working out successions to power. Often, competent rulers had been followed by the incompetent, with corruption of governmental processes, wealthy landholders maintaining privileges, and neglect for the interests of common peasants. Had those in power been dependent upon the votes of common people, they might have done more for them, including more storage of grain in years of good harvests to cover times of disaster.
Incompetent government and upheaval made China vulnerable to invasion. In the 400s China again was unable to defend its borders. Xiongnu armies came from the north, and Xiongnu chieftains divided northern China among themselves. By the year 500 one dynasty of Xiongnu kings, the Tuoba Wei, dominated the whole of northern China, and culturally they were becoming more Chinese. In the south, meanwhile, a recent string of Chinese families had risen and fallen from power while engaging in rampages of murder as a way of settling disputes over who was to rule
n the north, power within the Tuoba Wei family passed to a dowager queen who was a devout Buddhist. This was Queen Hu. She executed lovers who had displeased her. She forced a rival into a convent and had her executed, and in 528 she executed her emperor son, who had been growing restless under the tutelage of her lovers. Outraged officials rebelled. Queen Hu cut her hair and sought refuge in a Buddhist nunnery, but the officials dragged her out and murdered her.
In 577 CE, another Xiongnu chieftain unified the north by force of arms, and in 580 this ruler died under suspicious circumstances. His son-in-law, the Duke of Sui, a tough Buddhist soldier from an aristocratic Chinese family, took power. He proclaimed that heaven and earthly signs indicated that those who had been ruling in the north had lost the mandate of heaven and that he, being virtuous and wise, had been designated by heaven as the rightful successor. He took the name Emperor Wen (Wen-di), and he had fifty-nine murdered to eliminate rivalry.
After consolidating his power in northern China, Emperor Wen conquered the southern half of China. China was united again. And with Emperor Wen having the family name of Sui, his dynasty became known as the Sui.
The Sui and Tang Dynasties....
Sui Dynasty, 609 CE
During the Sui dynasty, armies of forced laborers, male and female, were thrown into public works projects, including the building of a grand canal system – which brought the north and south closer together economically. Also, granaries were constructed. The Great Wall along the northern borders was rebuilt. There was ship building and road and palace construction.
Prosperity returned to China. Men of privilege benefited and Confucianism began to regain popularity. But, after little more than two decades, Sui rule came crashing down. Hostility toward the Sui had arisen among those who had been driven too hard on public works projects. Also the Sui dynasty ruined itself economically and militarily by its conceit concerning expansion. It attempted to expand against the kingdom of Goguryeo in northern Korea. China's force on occasion numbered more than 3000 warships, 1.15 million infantry, 50,000 cavalry, 5000 artillery pieces and many supporting laborers. China engaged in four main campaigns, and they ended in failure. Of 305,000 Chinese troops sent against the Koreans only 2,700 returned.
With its war against Korea and with flooding and famine came rebellion. China became embroiled in another civil war, with military leaders from various provinces fighting for supremacy.
In 618 the civil war ended with the Duke of Tang, Li Yuan, as the victor. He reunited China, became known as Emperor Gao-zu and began what became known as the Tang Dynasty. After he died, his sons fought over who would inherit his rule, and the winner was Taizong, who ruled to the middle of the century and led China in a return to prosperity and what would be called a golden age.
Taizong's son and heir, Gaozong, was weak, and rule in China descended again into conflict and murder. This began when Gaozong's concubine, Wu Zetian, managed to get the emperor to promote her in place of his wife. Wu Zetian used the traditional way of getting rid of rivals: she had the former empress and other rivals murdered. Wu Zetian became Empress Wu, and she exiled, murdered and drove to suicide elder ministers.
Emperor Gaozong suffered a stroke in his eleventh year of rule. He became enfeebled and a mere figurehead. Empress Wu moved to firmly establish her power. She murdered members of the Tang family whom she saw as possible rivals, and she elevated politically members of her own family. Working with informers, she instituted a reign of terror. She purged Confucian scholars and other opponents. She built up her power base by satisfying public needs and by raising in rank those bureaucrats who supported her. She remained devoted to Buddhism. She surrounded herself with holy men and monks and ordered a Buddhist temple for every prefecture
n her old age, Empress Wu lost control at court, and in 705 officials at court forced her to resign in favor of a member of the Tang family. This was a man named Zhongzong, who ruled until his death in 710 – his wife, Empress Wei, suspected of having poisoned him. Empress Wei tried to rule as had Empress Wu. She sold offices and Buddhist monkhoods, and she was behind other corruptions at court. Arbitrarily she had lands seized. She created opponents whom she failed to exterminate, and they ousted her from power, which led to the enthronement in 712 of a new Tang emperor: Xuanzong.
Xuanzong came to power at the age of 28 and was to remain in power forty-four years. He was active and courageous, and during his reign, prosperity increased. But in his later years he became increasingly absorbed in Taoist spirituality and uninterested in rule. After 745 he fell under the spell of his son's wife, Yang Guifei, a Taoist priestess. The young woman grew in influence. Xuanzong ignored the economy, and China went into another decline.
In 751, Islamic armies defeated the Chinese in central Asia, cutting China's route to India and the West. Muslims replaced the Chinese as the dominant influence along the Silk Road, and tribal nations on China's borders grew in power.
In December 755 a military general of Turkish origin, An Lushan, who had risen to prominence defending China's northern border, revolted against the old Tang emperor, Xuanzong. An Lushan expanded China militarily while Tang family resistance continued, and China fell again into chaos. An Lushan turned ill-tempered, and he put the fear of death into those close to him, including his son, An Qingxu, who assassinated him in January 757.
Forces loyal to the Tang dynasty defeated an executed An Qingxu in April 759. The An Lushan dynasty, the Yan, had two more rulers who came and were gone by 763. What became known as the An Lushan or An-shi Rebellion was over. Claims are made that the registered population of China fell from between 33 and 36 million, making the An Lushan rebellion the deadliest war in history in terms of percentage of population. note11
Eight years of war had destroyed the Tang prosperity. Warlordism emerged, with the Tang court accepting decentralization of political power.
In 825 a reckless Tang teenager, Jingzong, inherited the throne and filled the court with incompetent persons. Exasperated court eunuchs had him assassinated. At court, eunuch power had again filled the vacuum of monarchical weakness. Eunuchs chose who would become emperor, and in 840 they chose Wuzong, the fifth son of a previous emperor, Muzong. And while doing so the eunuchs murdered two rivals to the throne and the mothers of these contenders.
Wuzong, was an ardent Taoist, and he closed Buddhist shrines and temples, returned Buddhist monks and nuns to lay life and confiscated millions of acres of arable land for state use. Buddhism in China survived but never recovered, while Buddhism's rival, Confucianism, enjoyed a renewed intellectual life.
In 907 a military governor, Zhu Wen, usurped the throne and founded the Liang dynasty, one of a succession of five short-lived dynasties in the next half-century, while China fragmented into as many as ten regional states. Organized bandits roamed across China, pillaging and extorting. North of China a kingdom of herdsmen and semi-agricultural people of various ethnicities to be known as the Khitan overran a portion of China, including the capital city in 938, not yet called Beijing.
Conceit and Military Weakness under the Song Dynasty
In 960, amid the chaos in China, troops of the commander of the palace guard at the new capital of China at Kaifeng surrounded him and demanded that he become emperor. The commander agreed that he would if they vowed to obey him and not plunder, harm citizens or harm the ruling family they were overthrowing. The troops agreed, and they marched to the palace, overthrew a child-emperor who had been reigning nominally. China's period of Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms since 910 was coming to an end. The new emperor at Kaifeng was Taizu (his temple name), and the dynasty he began was called the Song – not to be confused with the Liu-Song Dynasty of the fifth century.
Taizu reigned for fifteen years. He and his younger brother (who became the emperor Taizong of Song, not to be confused with Taizong of the Tang dynasty) reunified that part of China not ruled by foreigners – subjugating one provincial kingdom after the other, their troops refraining from violence against local populations and giving amnesty to local military governors who fought him. Military governors – warlords – were retired with comforting pensions, and they were replaced by civilian officials.
A Song Dynasty sailing ship
Emperor Taizong defended against Liao, and he focused on economic and literary achievements. Prosperity returned. Revenues became three times what they had been during the Tang dynasty. Elegant living spread, and the arts flourished along with a growing population. Cities – the centers of culture – became more crowded. Landowners moved there, and the wealthy were transported about in rickshaws. Gardens decorated the city. There were amusement centers, with tea or wine shops, brothels, spectator entertainment such as theaters, puppetry, acrobatics and juggling – while a few worried about the immorality of extravagance.
n the eleventh century China had an iron industry – the foundation for a modern industrial society. note12 China's annual production of pig iron became twice what England's would be at the end of the 1700s. China's merchant ships were at an all time high in number, and increasing. The volume of trade was increasing. But China remained under Confucian influence, and the Confucians saw commerce as not respectable. In China, when someone accumulated a little extra money from trade, rather than invest in manufacturing he was tempted to buy land and become respectable. An independent and innovative bourgeoisie was not about to develop or acquire political power in China as it would in Britain. Neither would large private commercial and industrial enterprises develop.
During the Song dynasty, non-governmental economic enterprise broke free to a degree, but merchants remained dependent on the favors of governmental bureaucrats. Paying them a share of the take from enterprise in the form of contributions for government operations and personal gifts was a part of doing business. Private enterprise developed in small farming and trading, but it did not provide the kind of accumulation of wealth needed for the development of capitalism. China remained a peasant nation with a Confucian gentry elite and little upward mobility for those from other families. The best road to advance for the sons of common folk was in the military. The road to government jobs – office work – continued to be blocked for those students who were not from wealthy families.
As in most other civilized societies, women did not own property, and they remained uneducated. Moreover, their ability to labor was declining. Footbinding was coming into fashion. It began among the aristocrats. Creating small, deformed feet was considered erotic by men, and the ability to support women who could not walk unaided was a sign of wealth. Soon men of lesser rank wanted women with such feet, and it was to become so common that grown women with normal feet would appear freakish. Footbinding was a long and painful process that lasted during a girl's growing years. And in addition to the trouble in creating deformed feet, it slowed a woman's ability to contribute labor, with women hobbling about as they did housework.
In the eleventh century, China was at a new height technologically. It had paper, moveable type and printing. China had gunpowder, steel weapons and primitive rocketry. But militarily China was no Sparta or early Rome. Confucian bureaucrats were in charge of the military, and the Confucian elite was effete compared to the vigor of China's pastoral neighbors. The Confucianists tended to be pacifist. They saw soldiers as the lowest of all groups of people. Athletics and military skills were not esteemed. China had a military but no warrior class, and its military began to be neglected, with little attention being given to the arts of warfare. Military exams and military rankings were regarded with disdain. China tried to meet its defense needs by hiring mercenary armies, but this was to prove inadequate.
The conceit of China's elite led them to believe that they did not have to adjust to military realities. They believed that their neighbors would be sufficiently awed by China's greatness and its favor from the heavens. Exercising their Confucianism they believed that if the Chinese nation behaved morally, neighboring kings would give China the respect it deserved. They believed that neighboring kings would recognize China's proper role as a superior nation and would provide China with the tribute (taxes) that China deserved.
China military power was tested repeatedly by skirmishes launched by the Khitan, an ethnicity that dominated much of Manchuria and was ruling China's far north. After being defeated repeatedly by the Khitan (the Liao dynasty) the Song emperor, Zhenzong, waged war against them successfully and signed a treaty with them in 1005, the Shanyuan Treaty. It ceded to the Khitan that part of China which they occupied, including what today is Beijing, and Emperor Zhenzong agreed to pay the Khitan annual taxes (tribute).
In the northwest the Chinese struggled against the Tangut – a Tibetan people – and the Chinese gave in to the Tangut as they had the Khitan, allowing the Tangut to occupy their territory. In 1044, China bought peace with the Tangut by agreeing to make tribute payments to them as well as to the Khitan.
The Song emperors began to experience fiscal difficulties. Population growth in China had outdistanced economic growth. Military expenses associated with northern border wars had drained China economically, as did the cost of an ever growing governmental bureaucracy. The bureaucracy, moreover, was torn by factions proposing different measures regarding tax reform and land distribution. These reforms failed, as they had during the Han dynasty, and for the same reason: opposition from the largely Confucianist gentry, who put their individual economic interests ahead of the common good.
The emperor from the year 1101 was Huizong, who was also a poet, a good calligrapher and a devoted Taoist. Huizong spent a lot of money on extravagant Taoist pageants and on maintaining his palaces and gardens. He raised taxes. And, with government officials having a weak understanding of economics, their solution to a shortage of money was to print more of it. Inflation and higher taxes created rebellion.
Emperor Huizong managed to have the rebellion crushed. Then he decided to add to his successes by freeing more of China from Khitan rule. Prompted by China's military weakness, he made an alliance with the Jurchen people of Manchuria. The Jurchen were various ethnicities within the Khitan kingdom of Liao. The Jurchen rebelled against Khitan rule, and in 1125 the Jurchen accomplished what China, with its much larger population, had failed to do: defeat the Khitan. Then the Jurchen turned their army against the Song and drove farther into China, overrunning the Song dynasty's capital, Kaifeng, in 1126. Huizong and other royalty were among around 3,000 that the Jurchen took away as prisoners, and Emperor Huizong died in captivity.
Huizong's ninth son survived and continued the Song dynasty from around the Yangzi River southward and as far eastward as Sichuan province. Once again the Chinese ruled only in the south, the dynasty there called the Southern Song. And the Southern Song looked forward to reconquering the north.
In China's far north there was no ethnic border – the result of migrations and invasions into China during centuries past and Chinese having migrated into areas north of China.
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