(A) The period of transition: the Five Dynasties (A.D. 906-960)
1 Beginning of a new epoch
The rebellion of Huang Ch'ao in fact meant the end of the T'ang
dynasty and the division of China into a number of independent states.
Only for reasons of convenience we keep the traditional division into
dynasties and have our new period begin with the official end of the
T'ang dynasty in 906. We decided to call the new thousand years of
Chinese history “Modern Times” in order to indicate that from c.
860 on changes in China's social structure came about which set this
epoch off from the earlier thousand years which we called “The Middle
Ages”. Any division into periods is arbitrary as changes do not happen
from one year to the next. The first beginnings of the changes which
lead to the “Modern Times” actually can be seen from the end of An
Lu-shan's rebellion on, from c. A.D. 780 on, and the
transformation was more or less completed only in the middle of the
eleventh century.
If we want to characterize the “Modern Times” by one concept, we
would have to call this epoch the time of the emergence of a middle
class, and it will be remembered that the growth of the middle class in
Europe was also the decisive change between the Middle Ages and Modern
Times in Europe. The parallelism should, however, not be overdone. The
gentry continued to play a role in China during the Modern Times, much
more than the aristocracy did in Europe. The middle class did not ever
really get into power during the whole period.
While we will discuss the individual developments later in some
detail, a few words about the changes in general might be given already
here. The wars which followed Huang Ch'ao's rebellion greatly affected
the ruling gentry. A number of families were so strongly affected that
they lost their importance and disappeared. Commoners from the
followers of Huang Ch'ao or other armies succeeded to get into power,
to acquire property and to enter the ranks of the gentry. At about A.D.
1000 almost half of the gentry families were new families of low
origin. The state, often ruled by men who had just moved up, was no
more interested in the aristocratic manners of the old gentry families,
especially no more interested in their genealogies. When conditions
began to improve after A.D. 1000, and when the new families felt
themselves as real gentry families, they tried to set up a mechanism to
protect the status of their families. In the eleventh century private
genealogies began to be kept, so that any claim against the clan could
be checked. Clans set up rules of behaviour and procedure to regulate
all affairs of the clan without the necessity of asking the state to
interfere in case of conflict. Many such “clan rules” exist in China
and also in Japan which took over this innovation. Clans set apart
special pieces of land as clan land; the income of this land was to be
used to secure a minimum of support for every clan member and his own
family, so that no member ever could fall into utter poverty. Clan
schools which were run by income from special pieces of clan land were
established to guarantee an education for the members of the clan,
again in order to make sure that the clan would remain a part of the
elite. Many clans set up special marriage rules for clan members,
and after some time cross-cousin marriages between two or three
families were legally allowed; such marriages tended to fasten bonds
between clans and to prevent the loss of property by marriage. While on
the one hand, a new “clan consciousness” grew up among the gentry
families in order to secure their power, tax and corvee legislation
especially in the eleventh century induced many families to split up
into small families.
It can be shown that over the next centuries, the power of the
family head increased. He was now regarded as owner of the property,
not only mere administrator of family property. He got power over life
and death of his children. This increase of power went together with a
change of the position of the ruler. The period transition (until c. A.D. 1000) was followed by a period of “moderate absolutism” (until
1278) in which emperors as persons played a greater role than before,
and some emperors, such as Shen Tsung (in 1071), even declared that
they regarded the welfare of the masses as more important than the
profit of the gentry. After 1278, however, the personal influence of
the emperors grew further towards absolutism and in times became pure
despotism.
Individuals, especially family heads, gained more freedom in “Modern
Times”. Not only the period of transition, but also the following
period was a time of much greater social mobility than existed in the
Middle Ages. By various legal and/or illegal means people could move up
into positions of power and wealth: we know of many merchants who
succeeded in being allowed to enter the state examinations and thus got
access to jobs in the administration. Large, influential gentry
families in the capital protected sons from less important families and
thus gave them a chance to move into the gentry. Thus, these families
built up a clientele of lesser gentry families which assisted them and
upon the loyalty of which they could count. The gentry can from now on
be divided into two parts. First, there was a “big gentry” which
consisted of much fewer families than in earlier times and which
directed the policy in the capital; and secondly, there was a “small
gentry” which was operating mainly in the provincial cities, directing
local affairs and bound by ties of loyalty to big gentry families.
Gentry cliques now extended into the provinces and it often became
possible to identify a clique with a geographical area, which, however,
usually did not indicate particularistic tendencies.
Individual freedom did not show itself only in greater social
mobility. The restrictions which, for instance, had made the craftsmen
and artisans almost into serfs, were gradually lifted. From the early
sixteenth century on, craftsmen were free and no more subject to forced
labour services for the state. Most craftsmen in this epoch still had
their shops in one lane or street and lived above their shops, as they
had done in the earlier period. But from now on, they began to organize
in guilds of an essentially religious character, as similar guilds in
other parts of Asia at the same time also did. They provided welfare
services for their members, made some attempts towards standardization
of products and prices, imposed taxes upon their members, kept their
streets clean and tried to regulate salaries. Apprentices were
initiated in a kind of semi-religious ceremony, and often meetings took
place in temples. No guild, however, connected people of the same craft
living in different cities. Thus, they did not achieve political power.
Furthermore, each trade had its own guild; in Peking in the nineteenth
century there existed over 420 different guilds. Thus, guilds failed to
achieve political influence even within individual cities.
Probably at the same time, regional associations, the so-called “
hui-kuan” originated. Such associations united people from one city
or one area who lived in another city. People of different trades, but
mainly businessmen, came together under elected chiefs and councillors.
Sometimes, such regional associations could function as pressure
groups, especially as they were usually financially stronger than the
guilds. They often owned city property or farm land. Not all merchants,
however, were so organized. Although merchants remained under
humiliating restrictions as to the colour and material of their dress
and the prohibition to ride a horse, they could more often circumvent
such restrictions and in general had much more freedom in this epoch.
Trade, including overseas trade, developed greatly from now on. Soon
we find in the coastal ports a special office which handled custom and
registration affairs, supplied interpreters for foreigners, received
them officially and gave good-bye dinners when they left. Down to the
thirteenth century, most of this overseas trade was still in the hands
of foreigners, mainly Indians. Entrepreneurs hired ships, if they were
not ship-owners, hired trained merchants who in turn hired sailors
mainly from the South-East Asian countries, and sold their own
merchandise as well as took goods on commission. Wealthy Chinese gentry
families invested money in such foreign enterprises and in some cases
even gave their daughters in marriage to foreigners in order to profit
from this business.
We also see an emergence of industry from the eleventh century on.
We find men who were running almost monopolistic enterprises, such as
preparing charcoal for iron production and producing iron and steel at
the same time; some of these men had several factories, operating under
hired and qualified managers with more than 500 labourers. We find
beginnings of a labour legislation and the first strikes (A.D. 782 the
first strike of merchants in the capital; 1601 first strike of textile
workers).
Some of these labourers were so-called “vagrants", farmers who had
secretly left their land or their landlord's land for various reasons,
and had shifted to other regions where they did not register and thus
did not pay taxes. Entrepreneurs liked to hire them for industries
outside the towns where supervision by the government was not so
strong; naturally, these “vagrants” were completely at the mercy of
their employers.
Since c. 780 the economy can again be called a money economy;
more and more taxes were imposed in form of money instead of in kind.
This pressure forced farmers out of the land and into the cities in
order to earn there the cash they needed for their tax payments. These
men provided the labour force for industries, and this in turn led to
the strong growth of the cities, especially in Central China where
trade and industries developed most.
Wealthy people not only invested in industrial enterprises, but also
began to make heavy investments in agriculture in the vicinity of
cities in order to increase production and thus income. We find men who
drained lakes in order to create fields below the water level for easy
irrigation; others made floating fields on lakes and avoided land tax
payments; still others combined pig and fish breeding in one operation.
The introduction of money economy and money taxes led to a need for
more coinage. As metal was scarce and minting very expensive, iron
coins were introduced, silver became more and more common as means of
exchange, and paper money was issued. As the relative value of these
moneys changed with supply and demand, speculation became a flourishing
business which led to further enrichment of people in business. Even
the government became more money-minded: costs of operations and even
of wars were carefully calculated in order to achieve savings;
financial specialists were appointed by the government, just as clans
appointed such men for the efficient administration of their clan
properties.
Yet no real capitalism or industrialism developed until towards the
end of this epoch, although at the end of the twelfth century almost
all conditions for such a development seemed to be given.
2 Political situation in the tenth century
The Chinese call the period from 906 to 960 the “period of the Five
Dynasties” (Wu Tai). This is not quite accurate. It is true that
there were five dynasties in rapid succession in North China; but at
the same time there were ten other dynasties in South China. The ten
southern dynasties, however, are regarded as not legitimate. The south
was much better off with its illegitimate dynasties than the north with
the legitimate ones. The dynasties in the south (we may dispense with
giving their names) were the realms of some of the military governors
so often mentioned above. These governors had already become
independent at the end of the T'ang epoch; they declared themselves
kings or emperors and ruled particular provinces in the south, the
chief of which covered the territory of the present provinces of
Szechwan, Kwangtung and Chekiang. In these territories there was
comparative peace and economic prosperity, since they were able to
control their own affairs and were no longer dependent on a corrupt
central government. They also made great cultural progress, and they
did not lose their importance later when they were annexed in the
period of the Sung dynasty.
As an example of these states one may mention the small state of
Ch'u in the present province of Hunan. Here, Ma Yin, a former carpenter
(died 931), had made himself a king. He controlled some of the main
trade routes, set up a clean administration, bought up all merchandise
which the merchants brought, but allowed them to export only local
products, mainly tea, iron and lead. This regulation gave him a
personal income of several millions every year, and in addition
fostered the exploitation of the natural resources of this hitherto
retarded area.
3 Monopolistic trade in South China. Printing and paper money in
the north
The prosperity of the small states of South China was largely due to
the growth of trade, especially the tea trade. The habit of drinking
tea seems to have been an ancient Tibetan custom, which spread to
south-eastern China in the third century A.D. Since then there had been
two main centres of production, Szechwan and south-eastern China. Until
the eleventh century Szechwan had remained the leading producer, and
tea had been drunk in the Tibetan fashion, mixed with flour, salt, and
ginger. It then began to be drunk without admixture. In the T'ang epoch
tea drinking spread all over China, and there sprang up a class of
wholesalers who bought the tea from the peasants, accumulated stocks,
and distributed them. From 783 date the first attempts of the state to
monopolize the tea trade and to make it a source of revenue; but it
failed in an attempt to make the cultivation a state monopoly. A tea
commissariat was accordingly set up to buy the tea from the producers
and supply it to traders in possession of a state licence. There
naturally developed then a pernicious collaboration between state
officials and the wholesalers. The latter soon eliminated the small
traders, so that they themselves secured all the profit; official
support was secured by bribery. The state and the wholesalers alike
were keenly interested in the prevention of tea smuggling, which was
strictly prohibited.
The position was much the same with regard to salt. We have here for
the first time the association of officials with wholesalers or even
with a monopoly trade. This was of the utmost importance in all later
times. Monopoly progressed most rapidly in Szechwan, where there had
always been a numerous commercial community. In the period of political
fragmentation Szechwan, as the principal tea-producing region and at
the same time an important producer of salt, was much better off than
any other part of China. Salt in Szechwan was largely produced by,
technically, very interesting salt wells which existed there since c. the first century B.C. The importance of salt will be understood if we
remember that a grown-up person in China uses an average of twelve
pounds of salt per year. The salt tax was the top budget item around
A.D. 900.
South-eastern China was also the chief centre of porcelain
production, although china clay is found also in North China. The use
of porcelain spread more and more widely. The first translucent
porcelain made its appearance, and porcelain became an important
article of commerce both within the country and for export. Already the
Muslim rulers of Baghdad around 800 used imported Chinese porcelain,
and by the end of the fourteenth century porcelain was known in Eastern
Africa. Exports to South-East Asia and Indonesia, and also to Japan
gained more and more importance in later centuries. Manufacture of high
quality porcelain calls for considerable amounts of capital investment
and working capital; small manufacturers produce too many second-rate
pieces; thus we have here the first beginnings of an industry that
developed industrial towns such as Ching-te, in which the majority of
the population were workers and merchants, with some 10,000 families
alone producing porcelain. Yet, for many centuries to come, the state
controlled the production and even the design of porcelain and
appropriated most of the production for use at court or as gifts.
The third important new development to be mentioned was that of
printing, which since c. 770 was known in the form of wood-block
printing. The first reference to a printed book dated from 835, and the
most important event in this field was the first printing of the
Classics by the orders of Feng Tao (882-954) around 940. The first
attempts to use movable type in China occurred around 1045, although
this invention did not get general acceptance in China. It was more
commonly used in Korea from the thirteenth century on and
revolutionized Europe from 1538 on. It seems to me that from the middle
of the twentieth century on, the West, too, shows a tendency to come
back to the printing of whole pages, but replacing the wood blocks by
photographic plates or other means. In the Far East, just as in Europe,
the invention of printing had far-reaching consequences. Books, which
until then had been very dear, because they had to be produced by
copyists, could now be produced cheaply and in quantity. It became
possible for a scholar to accumulate a library of his own and to work
in a wide field, where earlier he had been confined to a few books or
even a single text. The results were the spread of education, beginning
with reading and writing, among wider groups, and the broadening of
education: a large number of texts were read and compared, and no
longer only a few. Private libraries came into existence, so that the
imperial libraries were no longer the only ones. Publishing soon grew
in extent, and in private enterprise works were printed that were not
so serious and politically important as the classic books of the past.
Thus a new type of literature, the literature of entertainment, could
come into existence. Not all these consequences showed themselves at
once; some made their first appearance later, in the Sung period.
A fourth important innovation, this time in North China, was the
introduction of prototypes of paper money. The Chinese copper “cash"
was difficult or expensive to transport, simply because of its weight.
It thus presented great obstacles to trade. Occasionally a region with
an adverse balance of trade would lose all its copper money, with the
result of a local deflation. From time to time, iron money was
introduced in such deficit areas; it had for the first time been used
in Szechwan in the first century B.C., and was there extensively used
in the tenth century when after the conquest of the local state all
copper was taken to the east by the conquerors. So long as there was an
orderly administration, the government could send it money, though at
considerable cost; but if the administration was not functioning well,
the deflation continued. For this reason some provinces prohibited the
export of copper money from their territory at the end of the eighth
century. As the provinces were in the hands of military governors, the
central government could do next to nothing to prevent this. On the
other hand, the prohibition automatically made an end of all external
trade. The merchants accordingly began to prepare deposit certificates,
and in this way to set up a sort of transfer system. Soon these deposit
certificates entered into circulation as a sort of medium of payment at
first again in Szechwan, and gradually this led to a banking system and
the linking of wholesale trade with it. This made possible a much
greater volume of trade. Towards the end of the T'ang period the
government began to issue deposit certificates of its own: the merchant
deposited his copper money with a government agency, receiving in
exchange a certificate which he could put into circulation like money.
Meanwhile the government could put out the deposited money at interest,
or throw it into general circulation. The government's deposit
certificates were now printed. They were the predecessors of the paper
money used from the time of the Sung.
4 Political history of the Five Dynasties
The southern states were a factor not to be ignored in the
calculations of the northern dynasties. Although the southern kingdoms
were involved in a confusion of mutual hostilities, any one of them
might come to the fore as the ally of Turks or other northern powers.
The capital of the first of the five northern dynasties (once more a
Liang dynasty, but not to be confused with the Liang dynasty of the
south in the sixth century) was, moreover, quite close to the
territories of the southern dynasties, close to the site of the present
K'ai-feng, in the fertile plain of eastern China with its good means of
transport. Militarily the town could not be held, for its one and only
defence was the Yellow River. The founder of this Later Liang dynasty,
Chu Ch'uean-chung (906), was himself an eastern Chinese and, as will be
remembered, a past supporter of the revolutionary Huang Ch'ao, but he
had then gone over to the T'ang and had gained high military rank.
His northern frontier remained still more insecure than the
southern, for Chu Ch'uean-chung did not succeed in destroying the
Turkish general Li K'o-yung; on the contrary, the latter continually
widened the range of his power. Fortunately he, too, had an enemy at
his back—the Kitan (or Khitan), whose ruler had made himself emperor
in 916, and so staked a claim to reign over all China. The first Kitan
emperor held a middle course between Chu and Li, and so was able to
establish and expand his empire in peace. The striking power of his
empire, which from 937 onward was officially called the Liao empire,
grew steadily, because the old tribal league of the Kitan was
transformed into a centrally commanded military organization.
To these dangers from abroad threatening the Later Liang state
internal troubles were added. Chu Ch'uean-chung's dynasty was one of
the three Chinese dynasties that have ever come to power through a
popular rising. He himself was of peasant origin, and so were a large
part of his subordinates and helpers. Many of them had originally been
independent peasant leaders; others had been under Huang Ch'ao. All of
them were opposed to the gentry, and the great slaughter of the gentry
of the capital, shortly before the beginning of Chu's rule, had been
welcomed by Chu and his followers. The gentry therefore would not
co-operate with Chu and preferred to join the Turk Li K'o-yung. But Chu
could not confidently rely on his old comrades. They were jealous of
his success in gaining the place they all coveted, and were ready to
join in any independent enterprise as opportunity offered. All of them,
moreover, as soon as they were given any administrative post, busied
themselves with the acquisition of money and wealth as quickly as
possible. These abuses not only ate into the revenues of the state but
actually produced a common front between the peasantry and the remnants
of the gentry against the upstarts.
In 917, after Li K'o-yung's death, the Sha-t'o Turks beat off an
attack from the Kitan, and so were safe for a time from the northern
menace. They then marched against the Liang state, where a crisis had
been produced in 912 after the murder of Chu Ch'uean-chung by one of
his sons. The Liang generals saw no reason why they should fight for
the dynasty, and all of them went over to the enemy. Thus the “Later
T'ang dynasty” (923-936) came into power in North China, under the son
of Li K'o-yung.
The dominant element at this time was quite clearly the Chinese
gentry, especially in western and central China. The Sha-t'o themselves
must have been extraordinarily few in number, probably little more than
100,000 men. Most of them, moreover, were politically passive, being
simple soldiers. Only the ruling family and its following played any
active part, together with a few families related to it by marriage.
The whole state was regarded by the Sha-t'o rulers as a sort of family
enterprise, members of the family being placed in the most important
positions. As there were not enough of them, they adopted into the
family large numbers of aliens of all nationalities. Military posts
were given to faithful members of Li K'o-yung's or his successor's
bodyguard, and also to domestic servants and other clients of the
family. Thus, while in the Later Liang state elements from the
peasantry had risen in the world, some of these neo-gentry reaching the
top of the social pyramid in the centuries that followed, in the
Sha-t'o state some of its warriors, drawn from the most various
peoples, entered the gentry class through their personal relations with
the ruler. But in spite of all this the bulk of the officials came once
more from the Chinese. These educated Chinese not only succeeded in
winning over the rulers themselves to the Chinese cultural ideal, but
persuaded them to adopt laws that substantially restricted the
privileges of the Sha-t'o and brought advantages only to the Chinese
gentry. Consequently all the Chinese historians are enthusiastic about
the “Later T'ang", and especially about the emperor Ming Ti, who
reigned from 927 onward, after the assassination of his predecessor.
They also abused the Liang because they were against the gentry.
In 936 the Later T'ang dynasty gave place to the Later Chin dynasty
(936-946), but this involved no change in the structure of the empire.
The change of dynasty meant no more than that instead of the son
following the father the son-in-law had ascended the throne. It was of
more importance that the son-in-law, the Sha-t'o Turk Shih Ching-t'ang,
succeeded in doing this by allying himself with the Kitan and ceding to
them some of the northern provinces. The youthful successor, however,
of the first ruler of this dynasty was soon made to realize that the
Kitan regarded the founding of his dynasty as no more than a transition
stage on the way to their annexation of the whole of North China. The
old Sha-t'o nobles, who had not been sinified in the slightest,
suggested a preventive war; the actual court group, strongly sinified,
hesitated, but ultimately were unable to avoid war. The war was very
quickly decided by several governors in eastern China going over to the
Kitan, who had promised them the imperial title. In the course of 946-7
the Kitan occupied the capital and almost the whole of the country. In
947 the Kitan ruler proclaimed himself emperor of the Kitan and the
Chinese.
[Illustration: Map 6: The State of the later T'ang dynasty]
The Chinese gentry seem to have accepted this situation because a
Kitan emperor was just as acceptable to them as a Sha-t'o emperor; but
the Sha-t'o were not prepared to submit to the Kitan regime, because
under it they would have lost their position of privilege. At the head
of this opposition group stood the Sha-t'o general Liu Chih-yuan, who
founded the “Later Han dynasty” (947-950). He was able to hold out
against the Kitan only because in 947 the Kitan emperor died and his
son had to leave China and retreat to the north; fighting had broken
out between the empress dowager, who had some Chinese support, and the
young heir to the throne. The new Turkish dynasty, however, was unable
to withstand the internal Chinese resistance. Its founder died in 948,
and his son, owing to his youth, was entirely in the hands of a court
clique. In his effort to free himself from the tutelage of this group
he made a miscalculation, for the men on whom he thought he could
depend were largely supporters of the clique. So he lost his throne and
his life, and a Chinese general, Kuo Wei, took his place, founding the
“Later Chou dynasty” (951-959).
A feature of importance was that in the years of the short-lived
“Later Han dynasty” a tendency showed itself among the Chinese military
leaders to work with the states in the south. The increase in the
political influence of the south was due to its economic advance while
the north was reduced to economic chaos by the continual heavy
fighting, and by the complete irresponsibility of the Sha-t'o ruler in
financial matters: several times in this period the whole of the money
in the state treasury was handed out to soldiers to prevent them from
going over to some enemy or other. On the other hand, there was a
tendency in the south for the many neighbouring states to amalgamate,
and as this process took place close to the frontier of North China the
northern states could not passively look on. During the “Later Han"
period there were wars and risings, which continued in the time of the
“Later Chou”.
On the whole, the few years of the rule of the second emperor of the
“Later Chou” (954-958) form a bright spot in those dismal fifty-five
years. Sociologically regarded, that dynasty formed merely a transition
stage on the way to the Sung dynasty that now followed: the Chinese
gentry ruled under the leadership of an upstart who had risen from the
ranks, and they ruled in accordance with the old principles of gentry
rule. The Sha-t'o, who had formed the three preceding dynasties, had
been so reduced that they were now a tiny minority and no longer
counted. This minority had only been able to maintain its position
through the special social conditions created by the “Later Liang"
dynasty: the Liang, who had come from the lower classes of the
population, had driven the gentry into the arms of the Sha-t'o Turks.
As soon as the upstarts, in so far as they had not fallen again or been
exterminated, had more or less assimilated themselves to the old
gentry, and on the other hand the leaders of the Sha-t'o had become
numerically too weak, there was a possibility of resuming the old form
of rule.
There had been certain changes in this period. The north-west of
China, the region of the old capital Ch'ang-an, had been so ruined by
the fighting that had gone on mainly there and farther north, that it
was eliminated as a centre of power for a hundred years to come; it had
been largely depopulated. The north was under the rule of the Kitan:
its trade, which in the past had been with the Huang-ho basin, was now
perforce diverted to Peking, which soon became the main centre of the
power of the Kitan. The south, particularly the lower Yangtze region
and the province of Szechwan, had made economic progress, at least in
comparison with the north; consequently it had gained in political
importance.
One other event of this time has to be mentioned: the great
persecution of Buddhism in 955, but not only because 30,336 temples and
monasteries were secularized and only some 2,700 with 61,200 monks were
left. Although the immediate reason for this action seems to have been
that too many men entered the monasteries in order to avoid being taken
as soldiers, the effect of the law of 955 was that from now on the
Buddhists were put under regulations which clarified once and for ever
their position within the framework of a society which had as its aim
to define clearly the status of each individual within each social
class. Private persons were no more allowed to erect temples and
monasteries. The number of temples per district was legally fixed. A
person could become monk only if the head of the family gave its
permission. He had to be over fifteen years of age and had to know by
heart at least one hundred pages of texts. The state took over the
control of the ordinations which could be performed only after a
successful examination. Each year a list of all monks had to be
submitted to the government in two copies. Monks had to carry six
identification cards with them, one of which was the ordination diploma
for which a fee had to be paid to the government (already since 755).
The diploma was, in the eleventh century, issued by the Bureau of
Sacrifices, but the money was collected by the Ministry of Agriculture.
It can be regarded as a payment in lieu of land tax. The price
was in the eleventh century 130 strings, which represented the value of
a small farm or the value of some 17,000 litres of grain. The price of
the diploma went up to 220 strings in 1101, and the then government
sold 30,000 diplomas per year in order to get still more cash. But as
diplomas could be traded, a black market developed, on which they were
sold for as little as twenty strings.
(B) Period of Moderate Absolutism
(1) The Northern Sung dynasty
1 Southward expansion
The founder of the Sung dynasty, Chao K'uang-yin, came of a Chinese
military family living to the south of Peking. He advanced from general
to emperor, and so differed in no way from the emperors who had
preceded him. But his dynasty did not disappear as quickly as the
others; for this there were several reasons. To begin with, there was
the simple fact that he remained alive longer than the other founders
of dynasties, and so was able to place his rule on a firmer foundation.
But in addition to this he followed a new course, which in certain ways
smoothed matters for him and for his successors, in foreign policy.
This Sung dynasty, as Chao K'uang-yin named it, no longer turned
against the northern peoples, particularly the Kitan, but against the
south. This was not exactly an heroic policy: the north of China
remained in the hands of the Kitan. There were frequent clashes, but no
real effort was made to destroy the Kitan, whose dynasty was now called
“Liao”. The second emperor of the Sung was actually heavily defeated
several times by the Kitan. But they, for their part, made no attempt
to conquer the whole of China, especially since the task would have
become more and more burdensome the farther south the Sung expanded.
And very soon there were other reasons why the Kitan should refrain
from turning their whole strength against the Chinese.
[Illustration: 10 Ladies of the Court: clay models which accompanied
the dead person to the grave. T'ang period. In the collection of the
Museum fuer Voelkerkunde, Berlin.]
[Illustration: 11 Distinguished founder: a temple banner found at
Khotcho, Turkestan. Museum fuer Voelkerkunde, Berlin, No. 1B
4524, illustration B 408.]
As we said, the Sung turned at once against the states in the south.
Some of the many small southern states had made substantial economic
and cultural advance, but militarily they were not strong. Chao
K'uang-yin (named as emperor T'ai Tsu) attacked them in succession.
Most of them fell very quickly and without any heavy fighting,
especially since the Sung dealt mildly with the defeated rulers and
their following. The gentry and the merchants in these small states
could not but realize the advantages of a widened and well-ordered
economic field, and they were therefore entirely in favour of the
annexation of their country so soon as it proved to be tolerable. And
the Sung empire could only endure and gain strength if it had control
of the regions along the Yangtze and around Canton, with their great
economic resources. The process of absorbing the small states in the
south continued until 980. Before it was ended, the Sung tried to
extend their influence in the south beyond the Chinese border, and
secured a sort of protectorate over parts of Annam (973). This sphere
of influence was politically insignificant and not directly of any
economic importance; but it fulfilled for the Sung the same functions
which colonial territories fulfilled for Europeans, serving as a field
of operation for the commercial class, who imported raw materials from
it—mainly, it is true, luxury articles such as special sorts of wood,
perfumes, ivory, and so on—and exported Chinese manufactures. As the
power of the empire grew, this zone of influence extended as far as
Indonesia: the process had begun in the T'ang period. The trade with
the south had not the deleterious effects of the trade with Central
Asia. There was no sale of refined metals, and none of fabrics, as the
natives produced their own textiles which sufficed for their needs. And
the export of porcelain brought no economic injury to China, but the
reverse.
This Sung policy was entirely in the interest of the gentry and of
the trading community which was now closely connected with them.
Undoubtedly it strengthened China. The policy of nonintervention in the
north was endurable even when peace with the Kitan had to be bought by
the payment of an annual tribute. From 1004 onwards, 100,000 ounces of
silver and 200,000 bales of silk were paid annually to the Kitan,
amounting in value to about 270,000 strings of cash, each of 1,000
coins. The state budget amounted to some 20,000,000 strings of cash. In
1038 the payments amounted to 500,000 strings, but the budget was by
then much larger. One is liable to get a false impression when reading
of these big payments if one does not take into account what percentage
they formed of the total revenues of the state. The tribute to the
Kitan amounted to less than 2 per cent of the revenue, while the
expenditure on the army accounted for 25 per cent of the budget. It
cost much less to pay tribute than to maintain large armies and go to
war. Financial considerations played a great part during the Sung
epoch. The taxation revenue of the empire rose rapidly after the
pacification of the south; soon after the beginning of the dynasty the
state budget was double that of the T'ang. If the state expenditure in
the eleventh century had not continually grown through the increase in
military expenditure—in spite of everything!—there would have come a
period of great prosperity in the empire.
2 Administration and army. Inflation
The Sung emperor, like the rulers of the transition period, had
gained the throne by his personal abilities as military leader; in
fact, he had been made emperor by his soldiers as had happened to so
many emperors in later Imperial Rome. For the next 300 years we observe
a change in the position of the emperor. On the one hand, if he was
active and intelligent enough, he exercised much more personal
influence than the rulers of the Middle Ages. On the other hand, at the
same time, the emperors were much closer to their ministers as before.
We hear of ministers who patted the ruler on the shoulders when they
retired from an audience; another one fell asleep on the emperor's knee
and was not punished for this familiarity. The emperor was called “
kuan-chia” (Administrator) and even called himself so. And in the
early twelfth century an emperor stated “I do not regard the empire as
my personal property; my job is to guide the people”.
Financially-minded as the Sung dynasty was, the cost of the operation
of the palace was calculated, so that the emperor had a budget: in 1068
the salaries of all officials in the capital amounted to 40,000 strings
of money per month, the armies 100,000, and the emperor's ordinary
monthly budget was 70,000 strings. For festivals, imperial birthdays,
weddings and burials extra allowances were made. Thus, the Sung rulers
may be called “moderate absolutists” and not despots.
One of the first acts of the new Sung emperor, in 963, was a
fundamental reorganization of the administration of the country. The
old system of a civil administration and a military administration
independent of it was brought to an end and the whole administration of
the country placed in the hands of civil officials. The gentry welcomed
this measure and gave it full support, because it enabled the influence
of the gentry to grow and removed the fear of competition from the
military, some of whom did not belong by birth to the gentry. The
generals by whose aid the empire had been created were put on pension,
or transferred to civil employment, as quickly as possible. The army
was demobilized, and this measure was bound up with the settlement of
peasants in the regions which war had depopulated, or on new land. Soon
after this the revenue noticeably increased. Above all, the army was
placed directly under the central administration, and the system of
military governors was thus brought to an end. The soldiers became
mercenaries of the state, whereas in the past there had been
conscription. In 975 the army had numbered only 378,000, and its cost
had not been insupportable. Although the numbers increased greatly,
reaching 912,000 in 1017 and 1,259,000 in 1045, this implied no
increase in military strength; for men who had once been soldiers
remained with the army even when they were too old for service.
Moreover, the soldiers grew more and more exacting; when detachments
were transferred to another region, for instance, the soldiers would
not carry their baggage; an army of porters had to be assembled. The
soldiers also refused to go to regions remote from their homes until
they were given extra pay. Such allowances gradually became customary,
and so the military expenditure grew by leaps and bounds without any
corresponding increase in the striking power of the army.
The government was unable to meet the whole cost of the army out of
taxation revenue. The attempt was made to cover the expenditure by
coining fresh money. In connection with the increase in commercial
capital described above, and the consequent beginning of an industry,
China's metal production had greatly increased. In 1050 thirteen times
as much silver, eight times as much copper, and fourteen times as much
iron was produced as in 800. Thus the circulation of the copper
currency was increased. The cost of minting, however, amounted in China
to about 75 per cent and often over 100 per cent of the value of the
money coined. In addition to this, the metal was produced in the south,
while the capital was in the north. The coin had therefore to be
carried a long distance to reach the capital and to be sent on to the
soldiers in the north.
To meet the increasing expenditure, an unexampled quantity of new
money was put into circulation. The state budget increased from
22,200,000 in A.D. 1000 to 150,800,000 in 1021. The Kitan state coined
a great deal of silver, and some of the tribute was paid to it in
silver. The greatly increased production of silver led to its being put
into circulation in China itself. And this provided a new field of
speculation, through the variations in the rates for silver and for
copper. Speculation was also possible with the deposit certificates,
which were issued in quantities by the state from the beginning of the
eleventh century, and to which the first true paper money was soon
added. The paper money and the certificates were redeemable at a
definite date, but at a reduction of at least 3 per cent of their
value; this, too, yielded a certain revenue to the state.
The inflation that resulted from all these measures brought profit
to the big merchants in spite of the fact that they had to supply
directly or indirectly all non-agricultural taxes (in 1160 some
40,000,000 strings annually), especially the salt tax (50 per cent),
wine tax (36 per cent), tea tax (7 per cent) and customs (7 per cent).
Although the official economic thinking remained Confucian, i.e.
anti-business and pro-agrarian, we find in this time insight in price
laws, for instance, that peace times and/or decrease of population
induce deflation. The government had always attempted to manipulate the
prices by interference. Already in much earlier times, again and again,
attempts had been made to lower the prices by the so-called
“ever-normal granaries” of the government which threw grain on the
market when prices were too high and bought grain when prices were low.
But now, in addition to such measures, we also find others which
exhibit a deeper insight: in a period of starvation, the scholar and
official Fan Chung-yen instead of officially reducing grain prices,
raised the prices in his district considerably. Although the population
got angry, merchants started to import large amounts of grain; as soon
as this happened, Fan (himself a big landowner) reduced the price
again. Similar results were achieved by others by just stimulating
merchants to import grain into deficit areas.
With the social structure of medieval Europe, similar financial and
fiscal developments which gave new chances to merchants, eventually led
to industrial capitalism and industrial society. In China, however, the
gentry in their capacity of officials hindered the growth of
independent trade, and permitted its existence only in association with
themselves. As they also represented landed property, it was in land
that the newly-formed capital was invested. Thus we see in the Sung
period, and especially in the eleventh century, the greatest
accumulation of estates that there had ever been up to then in China.
Many of these estates came into origin as gifts of the emperor to
individuals or to temples, others were created on hillsides on land
which belonged to the villages. From this time on, the rest of the
village commons in China proper disappeared. Villagers could no longer
use the top-soil of the hills as fertilizer, or the trees as firewood
and building material. In addition, the hillside estates diverted the
water of springs and creeks, thus damaging severely the irrigation
works of the villagers in the plains. The estates (chuang) were
controlled by appointed managers who often became hereditary managers.
The tenants on the estates were quite often non-registered migrants, of
whom we spoke previously as “vagrants", and as such they depended upon
the managers who could always denounce them to the authorities which
would lead to punishment because nobody was allowed to leave his home
without officially changing his registration. Many estates operated
mills and even textile factories with non-registered weavers. Others
seem to have specialized in sheep breeding. Present-day village names
ending with—chuang indicate such former estates. A new
development in this period were the “clan estates” (i-chuang),
created by Fan Chung-yen (989-1052) in 1048. The income of these clan
estates were used for the benefit of the whole clan, were controlled by
clan-appointed managers and had tax-free status, guaranteed by the
government which regarded them as welfare institutions. Technically,
they might better be called corporations because they were similar in
structure to some of our industrial corporations. Under the Chinese
economic system, large-scale landowning always proved socially and
politically injurious. Up to very recent times the peasant who rented
his land paid 40-50 per cent of the produce to the landowner, who was
responsible for payment of the normal land tax. The landlord, however,
had always found means of evading payment. As each district had to
yield a definite amount of taxation, the more the big landowners
succeeded in evading payment the more had to be paid by the independent
small farmers. These independent peasants could then either “give"
their land to the big landowner and pay rent to him, thus escaping from
the attentions of the tax-officer, or simply leave the district and
secretly enter another one where they were not registered. In either
case the government lost taxes.
Large-scale landowning proved especially injurious in the Sung
period, for two reasons. To begin with, the official salaries, which
had always been small in China, were now totally inadequate, and so the
officials were given a fixed quantity of land, the yield of which was
regarded as an addition to salary. This land was free from part of the
taxes. Before long the officials had secured the liberation of the
whole of their land from the chief taxes. In the second place, the
taxation system was simplified by making the amount of tax proportional
to the amount of land owned. The lowest bracket, however, in this new
system of taxation comprised more land than a poor peasant would
actually own, and this was a heavy blow to the small peasant-owners,
who in the past had paid a proportion of their produce. Most of them
had so little land that they could barely live on its yield. Their
liability to taxation was at all times a very heavy burden to them
while the big landowners got off lightly. Thus this measure, though
administratively a saving of expense, proved unsocial.
All this made itself felt especially in the south with its great
estates of tax-evading landowners. Here the remaining small
peasant-owners had to pay the new taxes or to become tenants of the
landowners and lose their property. The north was still suffering from
the war-devastation of the tenth century. As the landlords were always
the first sufferers from popular uprisings as well as from war, they
had disappeared, leaving their former tenants as free peasants. From
this period on, we have enough data to observe a social “law ”: as the
capital was the largest consumer, especially of high-priced products
such as vegetables which could not be transported over long distances,
the gentry always tried to control the land around the capital. Here,
we find the highest concentration of landlords and tenants. Production
in this circle shifted from rice and wheat to mulberry trees for silk,
and vegetables grown under the trees. These urban demands resulted in
the growth of an “industrial” quarter on the outskirts of the capital,
in which especially silk for the upper classes was produced. The next
circle also contained many landlords, but production was more in staple
foods such as wheat and rice which could be transported. Exploitation
in this second circle was not much less than in the first circle,
because of less close supervision by the authorities. In the third
circle we find independent subsistence farmers. Some provincial
capitals, especially in Szechwan, exhibited a similar pattern of
circles. With the shift of the capital, a complete reorganization
appeared: landlords and officials gave up their properties, cultivation
changed, and a new system of circles began to form around the new
capital. We find, therefore, the grotesque result that the thinly
populated province of Shensi in the north-west yielded about a quarter
of the total revenues of the state: it had no large landowners, no
wealthy gentry, with their evasion of taxation, only a mass of
newly-settled small peasants' holdings. For this reason the government
was particularly interested in that province, and closely watched the
political changes in its neighbourhood. In 990 a man belonging to a
sinified Toba family, living on the border of Shensi, had made himself
king with the support of remnants of Toba tribes. In 1034 came severe
fighting, and in 1038 the king proclaimed himself emperor, in the Hsia
dynasty, and threatened the whole of north-western China. Tribute was
now also paid to this state (250,000 strings), but the fight against it
continued, to save that important province.
These were the main events in internal and external affairs during
the Sung period until 1068. It will be seen that foreign affairs were
of much less importance than developments in the country.
3 Reforms and Welfare schemes
The situation just described was bound to produce a reaction. In
spite of the inflationary measures the revenue fell, partly in
consequence of the tax evasions of the great landowners. It fell from
150,000,000 in 1021 to 116,000,000 in 1065. Expenditure did not fall,
and there was a constant succession of budget deficits. The young
emperor Shen Tsung (1068-1085) became convinced that the policy
followed by the ruling clique of officials and gentry was bad, and he
gave his adhesion to a small group led by Wang An-shih (1021-1086). The
ruling gentry clique represented especially the interests of the large
tea producers and merchants in Szechwan and Kiangsi. It advocated a
policy of laisser-faire in trade: it held that everything would
adjust itself. Wang An-shih himself came from Kiangsi and was therefore
supported at first by the government clique, within which the Kiangsi
group was trying to gain predominance over the Szechwan group. But Wang
An-shih came from a poor family, as did his supporters, for whom he
quickly secured posts. They represented the interests of the small
landholders and the small dealers. This group succeeded in gaining
power, and in carrying out a number of reforms, all directed against
the monopolist merchants. Credits for small peasants were introduced,
and officials were given bigger salaries, in order to make them
independent and to recruit officials who were not big landowners. The
army was greatly reduced, and in addition to the paid soldiery a
national militia was created. Special attention was paid to the
province of Shensi, whose conditions were taken more or less as a
model.
It seems that one consequence of Wang's reforms was a strong fall in
the prices, i.e. a deflation; therefore, as soon as the first decrees
were issued, the large plantation owners and the merchants who were
allied to them, offered furious opposition. A group of officials and
landlords who still had large properties in the vicinity of Loyang—at
that time a quiet cultural centre—also joined them. Even some of Wang
An-shih's former adherents came out against him. After a few years the
emperor was no longer able to retain Wang An-shih and had to abandon
the new policy. How really economic interests were here at issue may be
seen from the fact that for many of the new decrees which were not
directly concerned with economic affairs, such, for instance, as the
reform of the examination system, Wang An-shih was strongly attacked
though his opponents had themselves advocated them in the past and had
no practical objection to offer to them. The contest, however, between
the two groups was not over. The monopolistic landowners and their
merchants had the upper hand from 1086 to 1102, but then the advocates
of the policy represented by Wang again came into power for a short
time. They had but little success to show, as they did not remain in
power long enough and, owing to the strong opposition, they were never
able to make their control really effective.
Basically, both groups were against allowing the developing middle
class and especially the merchants to gain too much freedom, and
whatever freedom they in fact gained, came through extra-legal or
illegal practices. A proverb of the time said “People hate their ruler
as animals hate the net (of the hunter)”. The basic laws of medieval
times which had attempted to create stable social classes remained:
down to the nineteenth century there were slaves, different classes of
serfs or “commoners", and free burghers. Craftsmen remained under work
obligation. Merchants were second-class people. Each class had to wear
dresses of special colour and material, so that the social status of a
person, even if he was not an official and thus recognizable by his
insignia, was immediately clear when one saw him. The houses of
different classes differed from one another by the type of tiles, the
decorations of the doors and gates; the size of the main reception room
of the house was prescribed and was kept small for all non-officials;
and even size and form of the tombs was prescribed in detail for each
class. Once a person had a certain privilege, he and his descendants
even if they had lost their position in the bureaucracy, retained these
privileges over generations. All burghers were admitted to the
examinations and, thus, there was a certain social mobility allowed
within the leading class of the society, and a new “small gentry"
developed by this system.
Yet, the wars of the transition period had created a feeling of
insecurity within the gentry. The eleventh and twelfth centuries were
periods of extensive social legislation in order to give the lower
classes some degree of security and thus prevent them from attempting
to upset the status quo. In addition to the “ever-normal granaries” of
the state, “social granaries” were revived, into which all farmers of a
village had to deliver grain for periods of need. In 1098 a bureau for
housing and care was created which created homes for the old and
destitute; 1102 a bureau for medical care sent state doctors to homes
and hospitals as well as to private homes to care for poor patients;
from 1104 a bureau of burials took charge of the costs of burials of
poor persons. Doctors as craftsmen were under corvee obligation and
could easily be ordered by the state. Often, however, Buddhist priests
took charge of medical care, burial costs and hospitalization. The
state gave them premiums if they did good work. The Ministry of Civil
Affairs made the surveys of cases and costs, while the Ministry of
Finances paid the costs. We hear of state orphanages in 1247, a free
pharmacy in 1248, state hospitals were reorganized in 1143. In 1167 the
government gave low-interest loans to poor persons and (from 1159 on)
sold cheap grain from state granaries. Fire protection services in
large cities were organized. Finally, from 1141 on, the government
opened up to twenty-three geisha houses for the entertainment of
soldiers who were far from home in the capital and had no possibility
for other amusements. Public baths had existed already some centuries
ago; now Buddhist temples opened public baths as social service.
Social services for the officials were also extended. Already from
the eighth century on, offices were closed every tenth day and during
holidays, a total of almost eighty days per year. Even criminals got
some leave and exiles had the right of a home leave once every three
years. The pensions for retired officials after the age of seventy
which amounted to 50 per cent of the salary from the eighth century on,
were again raised, though widows did not receive benefits.
4 Cultural situation (philosophy, religion, literature, painting
)
Culturally the eleventh century was the most active period China had
so far experienced, apart from the fourth century B.C. As a consequence
of the immensely increased number of educated people resulting from the
invention of printing, circles of scholars and private schools set up
by scholars were scattered all over the country. The various
philosophical schools differed in their political attitude and in the
choice of literary models with which they were politically in sympathy.
Thus Wang An-shih and his followers preferred the rigid classic style
of Han Yue (768-825) who lived in the T'ang period and had also been an
opponent of the monopolistic tendencies of pre-capitalism. For the Wang
An-shih group formed itself into a school with a philosophy of its own
and with its own commentaries on the classics. As the representative of
the small merchants and the small landholders, this school advocated
policies of state control and specialized in the study and annotation
of classical books which seemed to favour their ideas.
But the Wang An-shih school was unable to hold its own against the
school that stood for monopolist trade capitalism, the new philosophy
described as Neo-Confucianism or the Sung school. Here Confucianism and
Buddhism were for the first time united. In the last centuries,
Buddhistic ideas had penetrated all of Chinese culture: the
slaughtering of animals and the executions of criminals were allowed
only on certain days, in accordance with Buddhist rules. Formerly,
monks and nuns had to greet the emperor as all citizens had to do; now
they were exempt from this rule. On the other hand, the first Sung
emperor was willing to throw himself to the earth in front of the
Buddha statues, but he was told he did not have to do it because he was
the “Buddha of the present time” and thus equal to the God. Buddhist
priests participated in the celebrations on the emperor's birthday, and
emperors from time to time gave free meals to large crowds of monks.
Buddhist thought entered the field of justice: in Sung time we hear
complaints that judges did not apply the laws and showed laxity,
because they hoped to gain religious merit by sparing the lives of
criminals. We had seen how the main current of Buddhism had changed
from a revolutionary to a reactionary doctrine. The new greater gentry
of the eleventh century adopted a number of elements of this
reactionary Buddhism and incorporated them in the Confucianist system.
This brought into Confucianism a metaphysic which it had lacked in the
past, greatly extending its influence on the people and at the same
time taking the wind out of the sails of Buddhism. The greater gentry
never again placed themselves on the side of the Buddhist Church as
they had done in the T'ang period. When they got tired of Confucianism,
they interested themselves in Taoism of the politically innocent,
escapist, meditative Buddhism.
Men like Chou Tun-i (1017-1073) and Chang Tsai (1020-1077) developed
a cosmological theory which could measure up with Buddhistic cosmology
and metaphysics. But perhaps more important was the attempt of the
Neo-Confucianists to explain the problem of evil. Confucius and his
followers had believed that every person could perfect himself by
overcoming the evil in him. As the good persons should be the elite
and rule the others, theoretically everybody who was a member of human
society, could move up and become a leader. It was commonly assumed
that human nature is good or indifferent, and that human feelings are
evil and have to be tamed and educated. When in Han time with the
establishment of the gentry society and its social classes, the idea
that any person could move up to become a leader if he only perfected
himself, appeared to be too unrealistic, the theory of different grades
of men was formed which found its clearest formulation by Han Yue: some
people have a good, others a neutral, and still others a bad nature;
therefore, not everybody can become a leader. The Neo-Confucianists,
especially Ch'eng Hao (1032-1085) and Ch'eng I (1033-1107), tried to
find the reasons for this inequality. According to them, nature is
neutral; but physical form originates with the combination of nature
with Material Force (ch'i). This combination produces
individuals in which there is a lack of balance or harmony. Man should
try to transform physical form and recover original nature. The
creative force by which such a transformation is possible is jen, love, the creative, life-giving quality of nature itself.
It should be remarked that Neo-Confucianism accepts an inequality of
men, as early Confucianism did; and that jen, love, in its
practical application has to be channelled by li, the system of
rules of behaviour. The li, however, always started from the
idea of a stratified class society. Chu Hsi (1130-1200), the famous
scholar and systematizer of Neo-Confucian thoughts, brought out rules
of behaviour for those burghers who did not belong to the gentry and
could not, therefore, be expected to perform all li; his
“simplified li” exercised a great influence not only upon
contemporary China, but also upon Korea and Annam and there
strengthened a hitherto looser patriarchal, patrilinear family system.
The Neo-Confucianists also compiled great analytical works of
history and encyclopaedias whose authority continued for many
centuries. They interpreted in these works all history in accordance
with their outlook; they issued new commentaries on all the classics in
order to spread interpretations that served their purposes. In the
field of commentary this school of thought was given perfect expression
by Chu Hsi, who also wrote one of the chief historical works. Chu Hsi's
commentaries became standard works for centuries, until the beginning
of the twentieth century. Yet, although Chu became the symbol of
conservatism, he was quite interested in science, and in this field he
had an open eye for changes.
The Sung period is so important, because it is also the time of the
greatest development of Chinese science and technology. Many new
theories, but also many practical, new inventions were made. Medicine
made substantial progress. About 1145 the first autopsy was made, on
the body of a South Chinese captive. In the field of agriculture, new
varieties of rice were developed, new techniques applied, new plants
introduced.
The Wang An-shih school of political philosophy had opponents also
in the field of literary style, the so-called Shu Group (Shu means the
present province of Szechwan), whose leaders were the famous Three Sus.
The greatest of the three was Su Tung-p'o (1036-1101); the others were
his father, Su Shih, and his brother, Su Che. It is characteristic of
these Shu poets, and also of the Kiangsi school associated with them,
that they made as much use as they could of the vernacular. It had not
been usual to introduce the phrases of everyday life into poetry, but
Su Tung-p'o made use of the most everyday expressions, without
diminishing his artistic effectiveness by so doing; on the contrary,
the result was to give his poems much more genuine feeling than those
of other poets. These poets were in harmony with the writings of the
T'ang period poet Po Chue-i (772-846) and were supported, like
Neo-Confucianism, by representatives of trade capitalism. Politically,
in their conservatism they were sharply opposed to the Wang An-shih
group. Midway between the two stood the so-called Loyang-School, whose
greatest leaders were the historian and poet Ss[)u]-ma Kuang
(1019-1086) and the philosopher-poet Shao Yung (1011-1077).
In addition to its poems, the Sung literature was famous for the
so-called pi-chi or miscellaneous notes. These consist of short
notes of the most various sort, notes on literature, art, politics,
archaeology, all mixed together. The pi-chi are a treasure-house
for the history of the culture of the time; they contain many details,
often of importance, about China's neighbouring peoples. They were
intended to serve as suggestions for learned conversation when scholars
came together; they aimed at showing how wide was a scholar's
knowledge. To this group we must add the accounts of travel, of which
some of great value dating from the Sung period are still extant; they
contain information of the greatest importance about the early Mongols
and also about Turkestan and South China.
While the Sung period was one of perfection in all fields of art,
painting undoubtedly gained its highest development in this time. We
find now two main streams in painting: some painters preferred the
decorative, pompous, but realistic approach, with great attention to
the detail. Later theoreticians brought this school in connection with
one school of meditative Buddhism, the so-called northern school. Men
who belonged to this school of painting often were active court
officials or painted for the court and for other representative
purposes. One of the most famous among them, Li Lung-mien (ca.
1040-1106), for instance painted the different breeds of horses in the
imperial stables. He was also famous for his Buddhistic figures.
Another school, later called the southern school, regarded painting as
an intimate, personal expression. They tried to paint inner realities
and not outer forms. They, too, were educated, but they did not paint
for anybody. They painted in their country houses when they felt in the
mood for expression. Their paintings did not stress details, but tried
to give the spirit of a landscape, for in this field they excelled
most. Best known of them is Mi Fei (ca. 1051-1107), a painter as well
as a calligrapher, art collector, and art critic. Typically, his
paintings were not much liked by the emperor Hui Tsung (ruled
1101-1125) who was one of the greatest art collectors and whose
catalogue of his collection became very famous. He created the Painting
Academy, an institution which mainly gave official recognition to
painters in form of titles which gave the painter access to and status
at court. Ma Yuean (c. 1190-1224), member of a whole painter's
family, and Hsia Kui (c. 1180-1230) continued the more
“impressionistic” tradition. Already in Sung time, however, many
painters could and did paint in different styles, “copying", i.e.
painting in the way of T'ang painters, in order to express their
changing emotions by changed styles, a fact which often makes the
dating of Chinese paintings very difficult.
Finally, art craft has left us famous porcelains of the Sung period.
The most characteristic production of that time is the green porcelain
known as “Celadon”. It consists usually of a rather solid paste, less
like porcelain than stoneware, covered with a green glaze; decoration
is incised, not painted, under the glaze. In the Sung period, however,
came the first pure white porcelain with incised ornamentation under
the glaze, and also with painting on the glaze. Not until near the end
of the Sung period did the blue and white porcelain begin (blue
painting on a white ground). The cobalt needed for this came from Asia
Minor. In exchange for the cobalt, Chinese porcelain went to Asia
Minor. This trade did not, however, grow greatly until the Mongol
epoch; later really substantial orders were placed in China, the
Chinese executing the patterns wanted in the West.
5 Military collapse
In foreign affairs the whole eleventh century was a period of
diplomatic manoeuvring, with every possible effort to avoid war. There
was long-continued fighting with the Kitan, and at times also with the
Turco-Tibetan Hsia, but diplomacy carried the day: tribute was paid to
both enemies, and the effort was made to stir up the Kitan against the
Hsia and vice versa; the other parties also intrigued in like fashion.
In 1110 the situation seemed to improve for the Sung in this game, as a
new enemy appeared in the rear of the Liao (Kitan), the Tungusic Juchen
(Jurchen), who in the past had been more or less subject to the Kitan.
In 1114 the Juchen made themselves independent and became a political
factor. The Kitan were crippled, and it became an easy matter to attack
them. But this pleasant situation did not last long. The Juchen
conquered Peking, and in 1125 the Kitan empire was destroyed; but in
the same year the Juchen marched against the Sung. In 1126 they
captured the Sung capital; the emperor and his art-loving father, who
had retired a little earlier, were taken prisoner, and the Northern
Sung dynasty was at an end.
The collapse came so quickly because the whole edifice of security
between the Kitan and the Sung was based on a policy of balance and of
diplomacy. Neither state was armed in any way, and so both collapsed at
the first assault from a military power.
(2) The Liao (Kitan) dynasty in the north (937-1125)
1 Social structure. Claim to the Chinese imperial throne
The Kitan, a league of tribes under the leadership of an apparently
Mongol tribe, had grown steadily stronger in north-eastern Mongolia
during the T'ang epoch. They had gained the allegiance of many tribes
in the west and also in Korea and Manchuria, and in the end, about A.D.
900, had become the dominant power in the north. The process of growth
of this nomad power was the same as that of other nomad states, such as
the Toba state, and therefore need not be described again in any detail
here. When the T'ang dynasty was deposed, the Kitan were among the
claimants to the Chinese throne, feeling fully justified in their claim
as the strongest power in the Far East. Owing to the strength of the
Sha-t'o Turks, who themselves claimed leadership in China, the
expansion of the Kitan empire slowed down. In the many battles the
Kitan suffered several setbacks. They also had enemies in the rear, a
state named Po-hai, ruled by Tunguses, in northern Korea, and the new
Korean state of Kao-li, which liberated itself from Chinese
overlordship in 919.
In 927 the Kitan finally destroyed Po-hai. This brought many Tungus
tribes, including the Jurchen (Juchen), under Kitan dominance. Then, in
936, the Kitan gained the allegiance of the Turkish general Shih
Ching-t'ang, and he was set on the Chinese throne as a feudatory of the
Kitan. It was hoped now to secure dominance over China, and accordingly
the Mongol name of the dynasty was altered to “Liao dynasty” in 937,
indicating the claim to the Chinese throne. Considerable regions of
North China came at once under the direct rule of the Liao. As a whole,
however, the plan failed: the feudatory Shih Ching-t'ang tried to make
himself independent; Chinese fought the Liao; and the Chinese sceptre
soon came back into the hands of a Sha-t'o dynasty (947). This ended
the plans of the Liao to conquer the whole of China.
For this there were several reasons. A nomad people was again ruling
the agrarian regions of North China. This time the representatives of
the ruling class remained military commanders, and at the same time
retained their herds of horses. As early as 1100 they had well over
10,000 herds, each of more than a thousand animals. The army commanders
had been awarded large regions which they themselves had conquered.
They collected the taxes in these regions, and passed on to the state
only the yield of the wine tax. On the other hand, in order to feed the
armies, in which there were now many Chinese soldiers, the frontier
regions were settled, the soldiers working as peasants in times of
peace, and peasants being required to contribute to the support of the
army. Both processes increased the interest of the Kitan ruling class
in the maintenance of peace. That class was growing rich, and preferred
living on the income from its properties or settlements to going to
war, which had become a more and more serious matter after the founding
of the great Sung empire, and was bound to be less remunerative. The
herds of horses were a further excellent source of income, for they
could be sold to the Sung, who had no horses. Then, from 1004 onward,
came the tribute payments from China, strengthening the interest in the
maintenance of peace. Thus great wealth accumulated in Peking, the
capital of the Liao; in this wealth the whole Kitan ruling class
participated, but the tribes in the north, owing to their remoteness,
had no share in it. In 988 the Chinese began negotiations, as a move in
their diplomacy, with the ruler of the later realm of the Hsia; in 990
the Kitan also negotiated with him, and they soon became a third
partner in the diplomatic game. Delegations were continually going from
one to another of the three realms, and they were joined by trade
missions. Agreement was soon reached on frontier questions, on
armament, on questions of demobilization, on the demilitarization of
particular regions, and so on, for the last thing anyone wanted was to
fight.
Then came the rising of the tribes of the north. They had remained
military tribes; of all the wealth nothing reached them, and they were
given no military employment, so that they had no hope of improving
their position. The leadership was assumed by the tribe of the Juchen
(1114). In a campaign of unprecedented rapidity they captured Peking,
and the Liao dynasty was ended (1125), a year earlier, as we know, than
the end of the Sung.
2 The State of the Kara-Kitai
A small troop of Liao, under the command of a member of the ruling
family, fled into the west. They were pursued without cessation, but
they succeeded in fighting their way through. After a few years of
nomad life in the mountains of northern Turkestan, they were able to
gain the collaboration of a few more tribes, and with them they then
invaded western Turkestan. There they founded the “Western Liao” state,
or, as the western sources call it, the “Kara-Kitai” state, with its
capital at Balasagun. This state must not be regarded as a purely Kitan
state. The Kitan formed only a very thin stratum, and the real power
was in the hands of autochthonous Turkish tribes, to whom the Kitan
soon became entirely assimilated in culture. Thus the history of this
state belongs to that of western Asia, especially as the relations of
the Kara-Kitai with the Far East were entirely broken off. In 1211 the
state was finally destroyed.
(3) The Hsi-Hsia State in the north (1038-1227)
1 Continuation of Turkish traditions
After the end of the Toba state in North China in 550, some tribes
of the Toba, including members of the ruling tribe with the tribal name
Toba, withdrew to the borderland between Tibet and China, where they
ruled over Tibetan and Tangut tribes. At the beginning of the T'ang
dynasty this tribe of Toba joined the T'ang. The tribal leader received
in return, as a distinction, the family name of the T'ang dynasty, Li.
His dependence on China was, however, only nominal and soon came
entirely to an end. In the tenth century the tribe gained in strength.
It is typical of the long continuance of old tribal traditions that a
leader of the tribe in the tenth century married a woman belonging to
the family to which the khans of the Hsiung-nu and all Turkish ruling
houses had belonged since 200 B.C. With the rise of the Kitan in the
north and of the Tibetan state in the south, the tribe decided to seek
the friendship of China. Its first mission, in 982, was well received.
Presents were sent to the chieftain of the tribe, he was helped against
his enemies, and he was given the status of a feudatory of the Sung; in
988 the family name of the Sung, Chao, was conferred on him. Then the
Kitan took a hand. They over-trumped the Sung by proclaiming the tribal
chieftain king of Hsia (990). Now the small state became interesting.
It was pampered by Liao and Sung in the effort to win it over or to
keep its friendship. The state grew; in 1031 its ruler resumed the old
family name of the Toba, thus proclaiming his intention to continue the
Toba empire; in 1034 he definitely parted from the Sung, and in 1038 he
proclaimed himself emperor in the Hsia dynasty, or, as the Chinese
generally called it, the “Hsi-Hsia", which means the Western Hsia. This
name, too, had associations with the old Hun tradition; it recalled the
state of Ho-lien P'o-p'o in the early fifth century. The state soon
covered the present province of Kansu, small parts of the adjoining
Tibetan territory, and parts of the Ordos region. It attacked the
province of Shensi, but the Chinese and the Liao attached the greatest
importance to that territory. Thus that was the scene of most of the
fighting.
[Illustration: 12 Ancient tiled pagoda at Chengting (Hopei).
Photo H. Hammer-Morrisson.]
[Illustration: 13 Horse-training. Painting by Li Lung-mien. Late
Sung period. Manchu Royal House Collection.] The Hsia state had
a ruling group of Toba, but these Toba had become entirely tibetanized.
The language of the country was Tibetan; the customs were those of the
Tanguts. A script was devised, in imitation of the Chinese script. Only
in recent years has it begun to be studied.
In 1125, when the Tungusic Juchen destroyed the Liao, the Hsia also
lost large territories in the east of their country, especially the
province of Shensi, which they had conquered; but they were still able
to hold their own. Their political importance to China, however,
vanished, since they were now divided from southern China and as
partners were no longer of the same value to it. Not until the Mongols
became a power did the Hsia recover some of their importance; but they
were among the first victims of the Mongols: in 1209 they had to submit
to them, and in 1227, the year of the death of Genghiz Khan, they were
annihilated.
(4) The empire of the Southern Sung dynasty (1127-1279)
1 Foundation
In the disaster of 1126, when the Juchen captured the Sung capital
and destroyed the Sung empire, a brother of the captive emperor
escaped. He made himself emperor in Nanking and founded the “Southern
Sung” dynasty, whose capital was soon shifted to the present Hangchow.
The foundation of the new dynasty was a relatively easy matter, and the
new state was much more solid than the southern kingdoms of 800 years
earlier, for the south had already been economically supreme, and the
great families that had ruled the state were virtually all from the
south. The loss of the north, i.e. the area north of the Yellow River
and of parts of Kiangsu, was of no importance to this governing group
and meant no loss of estates to it. Thus the transition from the
Northern to the Southern Sung was not of fundamental importance.
Consequently the Juchen had no chance of success when they arranged for
Liu Yue, who came of a northern Chinese family of small peasants and
had become an official, to be proclaimed emperor in the “Ch'i” dynasty
in 1130. They hoped that this puppet might attract the southern
Chinese, but seven years later they dropped him.
2 Internal situation
As the social structure of the Southern Sung empire had not been
changed, the country was not affected by the dynastic development. Only
the policy of diplomacy could not be pursued at once, as the Juchen
were bellicose at first and would not negotiate. There were therefore
several battles at the outset (in 1131 and 1134), in which the Chinese
were actually the more successful, but not decisively. The Sung
military group was faced as early as in 1131 with furious opposition
from the greater gentry, led by Ch'in K'ui, one of the largest
landowners of all. His estates were around Nanking, and so in the
deployment region and the region from which most of the soldiers had to
be drawn for the defensive struggle. Ch'in K'ui secured the
assassination of the leader of the military party, General Yo Fei, in
1141, and was able to conclude peace with the Juchen. The Sung had to
accept the status of vassals and to pay annual tribute to the Juchen.
This was the situation that best pleased the greater gentry. They paid
hardly any taxes (in many districts the greater gentry directly owned
more than 30 per cent of the land, in addition to which they had
indirect interests in the soil), and they were now free from the war
peril that ate into their revenues. The tribute amounted only to
500,000 strings of cash. Popular literature, however, to this day
represents Ch'in K'ui as a traitor and Yo Fei as a national hero.
In 1165 it was agreed between the Sung and the Juchen to regard each
other as states with equal rights. It is interesting to note here that
in the treaties during the Han time with the Hsiung-nu, the two
countries called one another brothers—with the Chinese ruler as the
older and thus privileged brother; but the treaties since the T'ang
time with northern powers and with Tibetans used the terms
father-in-law and son-in-law. The foreign power was the
“father-in-law", i.e. the older and, therefore, in a certain way the
more privileged; the Chinese were the “son-in-law", the representative
of the paternal lineage and, therefore, in another respect also the
more privileged! In spite of such agreements with the Juchen, fighting
continued, but it was mainly of the character of frontier engagements.
Not until 1204 did the military party, led by Han T'o-wei, regain
power; it resolved upon an active policy against the north. In
preparation for this a military reform was carried out. The campaign
proved a disastrous failure, as a result of which large territories in
the north were lost. The Sung sued for peace; Han T'o-wei's head was
cut off and sent to the Juchen. In this way peace was restored in 1208.
The old treaty relationship was now resumed, but the relations between
the two states remained tense. Meanwhile the Sung observed with
malicious pleasure how the Mongols were growing steadily stronger,
first destroying the Hsia state and then aiming the first heavy blows
against the Juchen. In the end the Sung entered into alliance with the
Mongols (1233) and joined them in attacking the Juchen, thus hastening
the end of the Juchen state.
The Sung now faced the Mongols, and were defenceless against them.
All the buffer states had gone. The Sung were quite without adequate
military defence. They hoped to stave off the Mongols in the same way
as they had met the Kitan and the Juchen. This time, however, they
misjudged the situation. In the great operations begun by the Mongols
in 1273 the Sung were defeated over and over again. In 1276 their
capital was taken by the Mongols and the emperor was made prisoner. For
three years longer there was a Sung emperor, in flight from the
Mongols, until the last emperor perished near Macao in South China.
3 Cultural situation; reasons for the collapse
The Southern Sung period was again one of flourishing culture. The
imperial court was entirely in the power of the greater gentry; several
times the emperors, who personally do not deserve individual mention,
were compelled to abdicate. They then lived on with a court of their
own, devoting themselves to pleasure in much the same way as the
“reigning” emperor. Round them was a countless swarm of poets and
artists. Never was there a time so rich in poets, though hardly one of
them was in any way outstanding. The poets, unlike those of earlier
times, belonged to the lesser gentry who were suffering from the
prevailing inflation. Salaries bore no relation to prices. Food was not
dear, but the things which a man of the upper class ought to have were
far out of reach: a big house cost 2,000 strings of cash, a concubine
800 strings. Thus the lesser gentry and the intelligentsia all lived on
their patrons among the greater gentry—with the result that they were
entirely shut out of politics. This explains why the literature of the
time is so unpolitical, and also why scarcely any philosophical works
appeared. The writers took refuge more and more in romanticism and
flight from realities.
The greater gentry, on the other hand, led a very elegant life,
building themselves magnificent palaces in the capital. They also
speculated in every direction. They speculated in land, in money, and
above all in the paper money that was coming more and more into use. In
1166 the paper circulation exceeded the value of 10,000,000 strings!
It seems that after 1127 a good number of farmers had left Honan and
the Yellow River plains when the Juchen conquered these places and
showed little interest in fostering agriculture; more left the border
areas of Southern Sung because of permanent war threat. Many of these
lived miserably as tenants on the farms of the gentry between Nanking
and Hangchow. Others migrated farther to the south, across Kiangsi into
southern Fukien. These migrants seem to have been the ancestors of the
Hakka which in the following centuries continued their migration
towards the south and who from the nineteenth century on were most
strongly concentrated in Kwangtung and Kwangsi provinces as free
farmers on hill slopes or as tenants of local landowners in the plains.
The influx of migrants and the increase of tenants and their poverty
seriously threatened the state and cut down its defensive strength more
and more.
At this stage, Chia Ssu-tao drafted a reform law. Chia had come to
the court through his sister becoming the emperor's concubine, but he
himself belonged to the lesser gentry. His proposal was that state
funds should be applied to the purchase of land in the possession of
the greater gentry over and above a fixed maximum. Peasants were to be
settled on this land, and its yield was to belong to the state, which
would be able to use it to meet military expenditure. In this way the
country's military strength was to be restored. Chia's influence lasted
just ten years, until 1275. He began putting the law into effect in the
region south of Nanking, where the principal estates of the greater
gentry were then situated. He brought upon himself, of course, the
mortal hatred of the greater gentry, and paid for his action with his
life. The emperor, in entering upon this policy, no doubt had hoped to
recover some of his power, but the greater gentry brought him down. The
gentry now openly played into the hands of the approaching Mongols, so
hastening the final collapse of the Sung. The peasants and the lesser
gentry would have fought the Mongols if it had been possible; but the
greater gentry enthusiastically went over to the Mongols, hoping to
save their property and so their influence by quickly joining the
enemy. On a long view they had not judged badly. The Mongols removed
the members of the gentry from all political posts, but left them their
estates; and before long the greater gentry reappeared in political
life. And when, later, the Mongol empire in China was brought down by a
popular rising, the greater gentry showed themselves to be the most
faithful allies of the Mongols!
(5) The empire of the Juchen in the north (1115-1234)
1 Rapid expansion from northern Korea to the Yangtze
The Juchen in the past had been only a small league of Tungus
tribes, whose name is preserved in that of the present Tungus tribe of
the Jurchen, which came under the domination of the Kitan after the
collapse of the state of Po-hai in northern Korea. We have already
briefly mentioned the reasons for their rise. After their first
successes against the Kitan (1114), their chieftain at once proclaimed
himself emperor (1115), giving his dynasty the name “Chin” (The
Golden). The Chin quickly continued their victorious progress. In 1125
the Kitan empire was destroyed. It will be remembered that the Sung
were at once attacked, although they had recently been allied with the
Chin against the Kitan. In 1126 the Sung capital was taken. The Chin
invasions were pushed farther south, and in 1130 the Yangtze was
crossed. But the Chin did not hold the whole of these conquests. Their
empire was not yet consolidated. Their partial withdrawal closed the
first phase of the Chin empire.
2 United front of all Chinese
But a few years after this maximum expansion, a withdrawal began
which went on much more quickly than usual in such cases. The reasons
were to be found both in external and in internal politics. The Juchen
had gained great agrarian regions in a rapid march of conquest. Once
more great cities with a huge urban population and immense wealth had
fallen to alien conquerors. Now the Juchen wanted to enjoy this wealth
as the Kitan had done before them. All the Juchen people counted as
citizens of the highest class; they were free from taxation and only
liable to military service. They were entitled to take possession of as
much cultivable land as they wanted; this they did, and they took not
only the “state domains” actually granted to them but also peasant
properties, so that Chinese free peasants had nothing left but the
worst fields, unless they became tenants on Juchen estates. A united
front was therefore formed between all Chinese, both peasants and
landowning gentry, against the Chin, such as it had not been possible
to form against the Kitan. This made an important contribution later to
the rapid collapse of the Chin empire.
The Chin who had thus come into possession of the cultivable land
and at the same time of the wealth of the towns, began a sort of
competition with each other for the best winnings, especially after the
government had returned to the old Sung capital, Pien-liang (now
K'ai-feng, in eastern Honan). Serious crises developed in their own
ranks. In 1149 the ruler was assassinated by his chancellor (a member
of the imperial family), who in turn was murdered in 1161. The Chin
thus failed to attain what had been secured by all earlier conquerors,
a reconciliation of the various elements of the population and the
collaboration of at least one group of the defeated Chinese.
3 Start of the Mongol empire
The cessation of fighting against the Sung brought no real advantage
in external affairs, though the tribute payments appealed to the greed
of the rulers and were therefore welcomed. There could be no question
of further campaigns against the south, for the Hsia empire in the west
had not been destroyed, though some of its territory had been annexed;
and a new peril soon made its appearance in the rear of the Chin. When
in the tenth century the Sha-t'o Turks had to withdraw from their
dominating position in China, because of their great loss of numbers
and consequently of strength, they went back into Mongolia and there
united with the Ta-tan (Tatars), among whom a new small league of
tribes had formed towards the end of the eleventh century, consisting
mainly of Mongols and Turks. In 1139 one of the chieftains of the
Juchen rebelled and entered into negotiations with the South Chinese.
He was killed, but his sons and his whole tribe then rebelled and went
into Mongolia, where they made common cause with the Mongols. The Chin
pursued them, and fought against them and against the Mongols, but
without success. Accordingly negotiations were begun, and a promise was
given to deliver meat and grain every year and to cede twenty-seven
military strongholds. A high title was conferred on the tribal leader
of the Mongols, in the hope of gaining his favour. He declined it,
however, and in 1147 assumed the title of emperor of the “greater
Mongol empire”. This was the beginning of the power of the Mongols, who
remained thereafter a dangerous enemy of the Chin in the north, until
in 1189 Genghiz Khan became their leader and made the Mongols the
greatest power of central Asia. In any case, the Chin had reason to
fear the Mongols from 1147 onward, and therefore were the more inclined
to leave the Sung in peace.
In 1210 the Mongols began the first great assault against the Chin,
the moment they had conquered the Hsia. In the years 1215-17 the
Mongols took the military key-positions from the Chin. After that there
could be no serious defence of the Chin empire. There came a respite
only because the Mongols had turned against the West. But in 1234 the
empire finally fell to the Mongols.
Many of the Chin entered the service of the Mongols, and with their
permission returned to Manchuria; there they fell back to the cultural
level of a warlike nomad people. Not until the sixteenth century did
these Tunguses recover, reorganize, and appear again in history this
time under the name of Manchus.
The North Chinese under Chin rule did not regard the Mongols as
enemies of their country, but were ready at once to collaborate with
them. The Mongols were even more friendly to them than to the South
Chinese, and treated them rather better.