home | 6th-15th centuries | Genghis Khan and the Mongols

Bloody Road to the Sui Dynasty

Rule by monarchy had been a misfortune for China, with war and bloodshed often the means of working out successions to power. Competent rulers eventually had been followed by the incompetent, with corruption of governmental processes and neglect of the interests of common people. Had those in power been dependent upon the will of the common people they might have done more for the common people - 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.

In northern China, power within the Tuoba Wei family passed to a dowager queen who was a devout Buddhist. This was Queen Hu. She struck against all who displeased her. She executed lovers who had displeased her. She forced a rival into a convent and had her executed, and in 528 she executed her 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.

The Chinese of northern China had absorbed the Xiongnu invaders, and northern China remained a mix of peoples like much of the rest of the civilized world. And after consolidating his power in northern China he 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.

Confucianists versus the Taoists versus the Buddhists during the Tang Dynasty

During the Sui dynasty, great public works were created, including the building of a "grand canal" system - which brought the north and south closer together and made them more economically interdependent. Prosperity returned to China. 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 had ruined itself economically and militarily with its wars 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 another 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, became enfeebled and a mere figurehead. Empress Wu more firmly established her power. She murdered members of the Tang family whom she saw as possible rivals, and she elevated the standings of members of her own family. Working with informers, she instituted a reign of terror. She purged Confucian scholars and other opponents. But she also built a political 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.

In 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 corruption at court. Arbitrarily she seized lands. 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. Yang Guifei  grew in influence. Xuanzong ignored the economy. Had China been a democracy Xuanzong would have been voted out office. Instead, China went into another decline.

In 751, Islamic armies defeated Chinese in central Asia, cutting China's route to India and the West. The Muslims replaced the Chinese as the dominate influence along the Silk Road, and tribal nations on China's borders grew in power. In 755 An Lushan, a general of Turkish origin and a close friend Yang Guifei, overthrew the old emperor, Xuanzong, and China descended into chaos once again. The son of Xuanzong ascended the throne, but power remained among regional military governors - warlords.

In 825 a reckless 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.

Taoists, meanwhile, had taken an interest in magical applications of chemicals. The Confucianists viewed this as a part of Taoism's vulgarity - as belonging to simple-minded common folks. Confucianists were left with a negative impression of chemistry, which was to contribute to a delay of science in China. Learning, the Confucianists believed, was best devoted to literature and history - their kind of literature and history.

Wuzong was interested in Taoist immortality potions, and apparently the potions poisoned him instead. Dead at the age of 33, he was followed by incompetent emperors. The last three Tang emperors (from 873 to 907) were  the puppets of eunuchs, and to the Chinese people it seemed that the Tang dynasty had lost the Mandate of Heaven.

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 about, pillaging and extorting. North of China, the Liao kingdom - a kingdom of herdsmen and semi-agricultural people of various ethnicities - overran a portion of China in the far north, including the capital city, Beijing.

Conceit and Military Weakness during the Song Dynasty

In 960, amid the chaos in China, troops of the commander of the palace guard at the new capital 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 the child-emperor who nominally had been reigning, and they put their commander on the throne. The name of the new emperor was Taizu, 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 heir (who became the emperor Taizong) 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. The politics of murder and war seemed to have ended.

Political unity helped bring back prosperity. Revenues during the Song dynasty were 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.

China built a massive iron industry - the foundation for a modern industrial society. Its annual production of pig iron was 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 not 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.

China was at its height economically and culturally. 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 was 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 merely behaved morally then neighboring kings would give China the respect it deserved, that they would recognize China's proper role as a superior nation and would provide China with the tribute (taxes) that China deserved.

China failed to face up to realities as its military power was tested repeatedly by skirmishes launched by the Khitan, an ethnicity that dominated much of Manchuria and were ruling China's far north. After being defeated repeatedly by the Khitan, the Song emperor, Zhenzong, in 1004, signed a treaty with the Khitan, ceding permanently to the Khitan that part of China which they occupied, including Beijing, and he 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 raised taxes created rebellion, and  Huizong crushed the rebellion as a part of his imperial, son-of-heaven, activity.

Then Huizong decided to add to his successes by freeing Beijing from Khitan rule. Prompted by China's military weakness, he made an alliance with the Ruzhen (or Jurchen) of  Manchuria. The Ruzhen were various ethnicities within the Khitan's Liao kingdom. The Ruzhen rebelled against Khitan rule, and in 1125 the Ruzhen accomplished what China, with its much larger population, had failed to do: defeat the Khitan. Then the Ruzhen 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 Ruzhen took away as prisoners, and Huizong died in captivity.

From the Ruzhen, a dynasty called the Jin now ruled in what had been China's northeast. In China's northwest the Tangut ruled - in an area, like the northeast, that had long been ethnically diverse, with people of Chinese heritage being in places a minority. Ethnically China had no northern border - the result of migrations and invasions into China during centuries past and Chinese having migrated into areas north of China.

Huizong's ninth son survived and continued the Song dynasty in southern China - 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.

to the top | 6th-15th centuries | Genghis Khan and the Mongols

Copyright © 2000 by Frank E. Smitha. All rights reserved.

address of this article: http://www.fsmitha.com/h3/h06chin.htm