THE EMPIRES OF THE SUI AND THE T'ANG
(A) The Sui dynasty (A.D. 580-618)
1 Internal situation in the newly unified empire
The last of the northern dynasties, the Northern Chou, had been brought to an end by Yang Chien: rapid
campaigns had made an end of the remaining petty states, and thus the Sui dynasty had come into power. China,
reunited after 360 years, was again under Chinese rule. This event brought about a new epoch in the history of the Far East. But the happenings of 360 years could not be wiped out by a change of dynasty. The short Sui
period can only be described as a period of transition to unified forms.
In the last resort the union of the various parts of China proceeded from the north. The north had always, beyond question, been militarily superior, because its ruling class had consisted of warlike peoples. Yet it was not a northerner who had united China but a Chinese though, owing to mixed marriages, he was certainly not entirely
unrelated to the northern peoples. The rule, however, of the actual northern peoples was at an end. The start of the Sui dynasty, while the Chou stil held the north, was evidence, just like the emergence in the north-east some thirty years earlier of the Northern Ch'i dynasty, that the Chinese gentry with their landowning basis had gained the upper hand over the warrior nomads.
The Chinese gentry had not come unchanged out of that struggle. Culturaly they had taken over many things
from the foreigners, beginning with music and the style of their clothing, in which they had entirely adopted the northern pattern, and including other elements of daily life. Among the gentry were now many formerly alien
families who had gradualy become entirely Chinese. On the other hand, the foreigners' feudal outlook had
influenced the gentry, so that a sense of distinctions of rank had developed among them. There were Chinese
families who regarded themselves as superior to the rest, just as had been the case among the northern peoples, and who married only among themselves or with the ruling house and not with ordinary families of the gentry.
They paid great attention to their genealogies, had the state keep records of them and insisted that the dynastic histories mentioned their families and their main family members. Lists of prominent gentry families were set up which mentioned the home of each clan, so that pretenders could easily be detected. The rules of giving personal names were changed so that it became possible to identify a person's genealogical position within the family. At the same time the contempt of the military underwent modification; the gentry were even ready to take over high military posts, and also to profit by them.
The new Sui empire found itself faced with many difficulties. During the three and a half centuries of division, north and south had developed in different ways. They no longer spoke the same language in everyday life (we
distinguish to this day between a Nanking and Peking "High Chinese", to say nothing of dialects). The social and economic structures were very different in the two parts of the country. How could unity be restored in these
things?
Then there was the problem of population. The north-eastern plain had always been thickly populated; it had
early come under Toba rule and had been able to develop further. The region round the old northern capital
Ch'ang-an, on the other hand, had suffered greatly from the struggles before the Toba period and had never
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entirely recovered. Meanwhile, in the south the population had greatly increased in the region north of Nanking, while the regions south of the Yangtze and the upper Yangtze valey were more thinly peopled. The real South,
i.e. the modern provinces of Fukien, Kwangtung and Kwangsi, was stil underdeveloped, mainly because of the
malaria there. In the matter of population the north unquestionably remained prominent.
The founder of the Sui dynasty, known by his reign name of Wen Ti (589-604), came from the west, close to
Ch'ang-an. There he and his folowing had their extensive domains. Owing to the scanty population there and the resulting shortage of agricultural labourers, these properties were very much less productive than the smal
properties in the north-east. This state of things was wel known in the south, and it was expected, with good
reason, that the government would try to transfer parts of the population to the north-west, in order to settle a peasantry round the capital for the support of its greatly increasing staff of officials, and to satisfy the gentry of the region. This produced several revolts in the south.
As an old soldier who had long been a subject of the Toba, Wen Ti had no great understanding of theory: he
was a practical man. He was anti-intelectual and emotionaly attached to Buddhism; he opposed Confucianism
for emotional reasons and believed that it could give him no serviceable officials of the sort he wanted. He
demanded from his officials the same obedience and sense of duty as from his soldiers; and he was above al
thrifty, almost miserly, because he realized that the finances of his state could only be brought into order by the greatest exertions. The budget had to be drawn up for the vast territory of the empire without any possibility of saying in advance whether the revenues would come in and whether the transport of dues to the capital would
function.
This cautious calculation was entirely justified, but it aroused great opposition. Both east and south were used to a much better style of living; yet the gentry of both regions were now required to cut down their consumption. On top of this they were excluded from the conduct of political affairs. In the past, under the Northern Ch'i empire in the north-east and under the Ch'en empire in the south, there had been thousands of positions at court in which the whole of the gentry could find accommodation of some kind. Now the central government was far in the
west, and other people were its administrators. In the past the gentry had a profitable and easily accessible
market for their produce in the neighbouring capital; now the capital was far away, entailing long-distance
transport at heavy risk with little profit.
The dissatisfied circles of the gentry in the north-east and in the south incited Prince Kuang to rebelion. The prince and his folowers murdered the emperor and set aside the heir-apparent; and Kuang came to the throne,
assuming the name of Yang Ti. His first act was to transfer the capital back to the east, to Loyang, close to the grain-producing regions. His second achievement was to order the construction of great canals, to facilitate the transport of grain to the capital and to provide a valuable new market for the producers in the north-east and the south. It was at this time that the first forerunner of the famous "Imperial Canal" was constructed, the canal that connects the Yangtze with the Yelow River. Smal canals, connecting various streams, had long been in
existence, so that it was possible to travel from north to south by water, but these canals were not deep enough or broad enough to take large freight barges. There are records of lighters of 500 and even 800 tons capacity!
These are dimensions unheard of in the West in those times. In addition to a serviceable canal to the south, Yang Ti made another that went north almost to the present Peking.
Hand in hand with these successes of the north-eastern and southern gentry went strong support for
Confucianism, and a reorganization of the Confucian examination system. As a rule, however, the examinations
were circumvented as an unimportant formality; the various governors were ordered each to send annualy to the
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capital three men with the required education, for whose quality they were held personaly responsible;
merchants and artisans were expressly excluded.
2 Relations with Turks and with Korea
In foreign affairs an extraordinarily fortunate situation for the Sui dynasty had come into existence. The T'u-chüeh, the Turks, much the strongest people of the north, had given support now to one and now to another of
the northern kingdoms, and this, together with their many armed incursions, had made them the dominant political factor in the north. But in the first year of the Sui period (581) they split into two sections, so that the Sui had hopes of gaining influence over them. At first both sections of the Turks had entered into aliance with China, but this was not a sufficient safeguard for the Sui, for one of the Turkish khans was surrounded by Toba who had
fled from the vanished state of the Northern Chou, and who now tried to induce the Turks to undertake a
campaign for the reconquest of North China. The leader of this agitation was a princess of the Yü-wen family,
the ruling family of the Northern Chou. The Chinese fought the Turks several times; but much more effective
results were gained by their diplomatic missions, which incited the eastern against the western Turks and vice versa, and also incited the Turks against the Toba clique. In the end one of the sections of Turks accepted
Chinese overlordship, and some tribes of the other section were brought over to the Chinese side; also, fresh
disunion was sown among the Turks.
Under the emperor Yang Ti, P'ei Chü carried this policy further. He induced the Tölös tribes to attack the T'u-yü-hun, and then himself attacked the latter, so destroying their power. The T'u-yü-hun were a people living in the extreme north of Tibet, under a ruling class apparently of Hsien-pi origin; the people were largely Tibetan.
The purpose of the conquest of the T'u-yü-hun was to safeguard access to Central Asia. An effective Turkestan
policy was, however, impossible so long as the Turks were stil a formidable power. Accordingly, the intrigues
that aimed at keeping the two sections of Turks apart were continued. In 615 came a decisive counter-attack
from the Turks. Their khan, Shih-pi, made a surprise assault on the emperor himself, with al his folowing, in the Ordos region, and succeeded in surrounding them. They were in just the same desperate situation as when, eight centuries earlier, the Chinese emperor had been beleaguered by Mao Tun. But the Chinese again saved
themselves by a trick. The young Chinese commander, Li Shih-min, succeeded in giving the Turks the impression
that large reinforcements were on the way; a Chinese princess who was with the Turks spread the rumour that
the Turks were to be attacked by another tribe—and Shih-pi raised the siege, although the Chinese had been
entirely defeated.
In the Sui period the Chinese were faced with a further problem. Korea or, rather, the most important of the
three states in Korea, had generaly been on friendly terms with the southern state during the period of China's division, and for this reason had been more or less protected from its North Chinese neighbours. After the
unification of China, Korea had reason for seeking an aliance with the Turks, in order to secure a new
counterweight against China.
A Turco-Korean aliance would have meant for China a sort of encirclement that might have grave
consequences. The aliance might be extended to Japan, who had certain interests in Korea. Accordingly the
Chinese determined to attack Korea, though at the same time negotiations were set on foot. The fighting, which lasted throughout the Sui period, involved technical difficulties, as it caled for combined land and sea attacks; in general it brought little success.
3 Reasons for collapse
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The continual warfare entailed great expense, and so did the intrigues, because they depended for their success on bribery. Stil more expensive were the great canal works. In addition to this, the emperor Yang Ti, unlike his father, was very extravagant. He built enormous palaces and undertook long journeys throughout the empire with an immense folowing. Al this wrecked the prosperity which his father had built up and had tried to safeguard.
The only productive expenditure was that on the canals, and they could not begin to pay in so short a period.
The emperor's continual journeys were due, no doubt, in part simply to the pursuit of pleasure, though they were probably intended at the same time to hinder risings and to give the emperor direct control over every part of the country. But the empire was too large and too complex for its administration to be possible in the midst of
journeying.
[Ilustration: Map 5: The T'ang realm ( about A.D. 750)]
The whole of the chancelery had to accompany the emperor, and al the transport necessary for the feeding of
the emperor and his government had continualy to be diverted to wherever he happened to be staying. Al this
produced disorder and unrest. The gentry, who at first had so strongly supported the emperor and had been able to obtain anything they wanted from him, now began to desert him and set up pretenders. From 615 onward,
after the defeat at the hands of the Turks, risings broke out everywhere. The emperor had to establish his
government in the south, where he felt safer. There, however, in 618, he was assassinated by conspirators led by Toba of the Yü-wen family. Everywhere now independent governments sprang up, and for five years China was
split up into countless petty states.
(B) The T'ang dynasty (A.D. 618-906)
1 Reforms and decentralization
The hero of the Turkish siege, Li Shih-min, had alied himself with the Turks in 615-16. There were special
reasons for his ability to do this. In his family it had been a regular custom to marry women belonging to Toba families, so that he naturaly enjoyed the confidence of the Toba party among the Turks. There are various
theories as to the origin of his family, the Li. The family itself claimed to be descended from the ruling family of the Western Liang. It is doubtful whether that family was purely Chinese, and in any case Li Shih-min's descent from it is a matter of doubt. It is possible that his family was a sinified Toba family, or at least came from a Toba region. However this may be, Li Shih-min continued the policy which had been pursued since the beginning of
the Sui dynasty by the members of the deposed Toba ruling family of the Northern Chou—the policy of
colaboration with the Turks in the effort to remove the Sui.
The nominal leadership in the rising that now began lay in the hands of Li Shih-min's father, Li Yüan; in practice Li Shih-min saw to everything. At the end of 617 he was outside the first capital of the Sui, Ch'ang-an, with a Turkish army that had come to his aid on the strength of the treaty of aliance. After capturing Ch'ang-an he
instaled a puppet emperor there, a grandson of Yang Ti. In 618 the puppet was dethroned and Li Yüan, the
father, was made emperor, in the T'ang dynasty. Internal fighting went on until 623, and only then was the whole empire brought under the rule of the T'ang.
Great reforms then began. A new land law aimed at equalizing ownership, so that as far as possible al peasants should own the same amount of land and the formation of large estates be prevented. The law aimed also at
protecting the peasants from the loss of their land. The law was, however, nothing but a modification of the Toba land law ( chün-t'ien), and it was hoped that now it would provide a sound and solid economic foundation for the www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/11367/pg11367.html
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empire. From the first, however, members of the gentry who were connected with the imperial house were given
a privileged position; then officials were excluded from the prohibition of leasing, so that there continued to be tenant farmers in addition to the independent peasants. Moreover, the temples enjoyed special treatment, and
were also exempted from taxation. Al these exceptions brought grist to the mils of the gentry, and so did the
failure to carry into effect many of the provisions of the law. Before long a new gentry had been formed,
consisting of the old gentry together with those who had directly aided the emperor's ascent to the throne. From the beginning of the eighth century there were repeated complaints that peasants were "disappearing". They were entering the service of the gentry as tenant farmers or farm workers, and owing to the privileged position of the gentry in regard to taxation, the revenue sank in proportion as the number of independent peasants decreased.
One of the reasons for the flight of farmers may have been the corvée laws connected with the "equal land"
system: smal families were much less affected by the corvée obligation than larger families with many sons. It may be, therefore, that large families or at least sons of the sons in large families moved away in order to escape these obligations. In order to prevent irregularities, the T'ang renewed the old " pao-chia" system, as a part of a general reform of the administration in 624. In this system groups of five families were colectively responsible for the payment of taxes, the corvée, for crimes committed by individuals within one group, and for loans from state agencies. Such a system is attested for pre-Christian times already; it was re-activated in the eleventh century and again from time to time, down to the present.
Yet the system of land equalization soon broke down and was abolished officialy around A.D. 780. But the
classification of citizens into different classes, first legalized under the Toba, was retained and even more refined.
As early as in the Han period there had been a dual administration—the civil and, independent of it, the military administration. One and the same area would belong to a particular administrative prefecture ( chün) and at the same time to a particular military prefecture ( chou). This dual organization had persisted during the Toba period and, at first, remained unchanged in the beginning of the T'ang.
The backbone of the military power in the seventh century was the militia, some six hundred units of an average of a thousand men, recruited from the general farming population for short-term service: one month in five in the areas close to the capital. These men formed a part of the emperor's guards and were under the command of
members of the Shensi gentry. This system which had its direct paralels in the Han time and evolved out of a
Toba system, broke down when short offensive wars were no longer fought. Other imperial guards were staffed
with young sons of the gentry who were stationed in the most delicate parts of the palaces. The emperor T'ai-
tsung had his personal bodyguard, a part of his own army of conquest, consisting of his former bondsmen ( pu-ch'ü). The ranks of the Army of conquest were later filed by descendants of the original soldiers and by orphans.
In the provinces, the armies of the military prefectures gradualy lost their importance when wars became longer and militiamen proved insufficient. Many of the soldiers here were convicts and exiles. It is interesting to note that the title of the commander of these armies, tu-tu, in the fourth century meant a commander in the church-Taoist organization; it was used by the Toba and from the seventh century on became widely accepted as title among
the Uighurs, Tibetans, Sogdians, Turks and Khotanese.
When the prefectural armies and the militia forces weakened, special regional armies were created (from 678
on); this institution had existed among the Toba, but they had greatly reduced these armies after 500. The
commanders of these new T'ang armies soon became more important than the civil administrators, because they
commanded a number of districts making up a whole province. This assured a better functioning of the military
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machine, but put the governors-general in a position to pursue a policy of their own, even against the central government. In addition to this, the financial administration of their commands was put under them, whereas in the past it had been in the hands of the civil administration of the various provinces. The civil administration was also reorganized (see the table on pages 83-84).
Towards the end of the T'ang period the state secretariat was set up in two parts: it was in possession of al
information about the economic and political affairs of the empire, and it made the actual decisions. Moreover, a number of technical departments had been created—in al, a system that might compare favourably with
European systems of the eighteenth century. At the end of the T'ang period there was added to this system a
section for economic affairs, working quite independently of it and directly under the emperor; it was staffed entirely with economic or financial experts, while for the staffing of the other departments no special qualification was demanded besides the passing of the state examinations. In addition to these, at the end of the T'ang period a new department was in preparation, a sort of Privy Council, a mainly military organization, probably intended to control the generals (section 3 of the table on page 83), just as the state secretariat controled the civil officials.
The Privy Council became more and more important in the tenth century and especialy in the Mongol epoch. Its
absence in the early T'ang period gave the military governors much too great freedom, ultimately with baneful
results.
At first, however, the reforms of A.D. 624 worked wel. The administration showed energy, and taxes flowed in.
In the middle of the eighth century the annual budget of the state included the folowing items: over a milion tons of grain for the consumption of the capital and the palace and for salaries of civil and military officials; twenty-seven milion pieces of textiles, also for the consumption of capital and palace and army, and for supplementary purchases of grain; two milion strings of money (a string nominaly held a thousand copper coins) for salaries and for the army. This was much more than the state budget of the Han period. The population of the empire had
also increased; it seems to have amounted to some fifty milions. In the capital a large staff of officials had been created to meet al administrative needs. The capital grew enormously, at times containing two milion people.
Great numbers of young members of the gentry streamed into the capital for the examinations held under the
Confucian system.
The crowding of people into the capital and the accumulation of resources there promoted a rich cultural life. We know of many poets of that period whose poems were real masterpieces; and artists whose works were
admired centuries later. These poets and artists were the pioneers of the flourishing culture of the later T'ang period. Hand in hand with this went luxury and refinement of manners. For those who retired from the bustle of the capital to work on their estates and to enjoy the society of their friends, there was time to occupy themselves with Taoism and Buddhism, especialy meditative Buddhism. Everyone, of course, was Confucian, as was fitting
for a member of the gentry, but Confucianism was so taken for granted that it was not discussed. It was the basis of morality for the gentry, but held no problems. It no longer contained anything of interest.
Conditions had been much the same once before, at the court of the Han emperors, but with one great
difference: at that time everything of importance took place in the capital; now, in addition to the actual capital, Ch'ang-an, there was the second capital, Loyang, in no way inferior to the other in importance; and the great
towns in the south also played their part as commercial and cultural centres that had developed in the 360 years of division between north and south. There the local gentry gathered to lead a cultivated life, though not quite in the grand style of the capital. If an official was transferred to the Yangtze, it no longer amounted to a punishment as in the past; he would not meet only uneducated people, but a society resembling that of the capital. The
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with a little court of his own, drawn from the local gentry and the local inteligentsia. This placed the whole edifice of the empire on a much broader foundation, with lasting results.
2 Turkish policy
The foreign policy of this first period of the T'ang, lasting until about 690, was mainly concerned with the Turks and Turkestan. There were stil two Turkish realms in the Far East, both of considerable strength but in keen
rivalry with each other. The T'ang had come into power with the aid of the eastern Turks, but they admitted the leader of the western Turks to their court; he had been at Ch'ang-an in the time of the Sui. He was murdered,
however, by Chinese at the instigation of the eastern Turks. The next khan of the eastern Turks nevertheless
turned against the T'ang, and gave his support to a stil surviving pretender to the throne representing the Sui dynasty; the khan contended that the old aliance of the eastern Turks had been with the Sui and not with the
T'ang. The T'ang therefore tried to come to terms once more with the western Turks, who had been affronted by
the assassination; but the negotiations came to nothing in face of an approach made by the eastern Turks to the western, and of the distrust of the Chinese with which al the Turks were filed. About 624 there were strong
Turkish invasions, carried right up to the capital. Suddenly, however, for reasons not disclosed by the Chinese sources, the Turks withdrew, and the T'ang were able to conclude a fairly honourable peace. This was the time
of the maximum power of the eastern Turks. Shortly afterwards disturbances broke out (627), under the
leadership of Turkish Uighurs and their alies. The Chinese took advantage of these disturbances, and in a great campaign in 629-30 succeeded in overthrowing the eastern Turks; the khan was taken to the imperial court in
Ch'ang-an, and the Chinese emperor made himself "Heavenly Khan" of the Turks. In spite of the protest of many of the ministers, who pointed to the result of the settlement policy of the Later Han dynasty, the eastern Turks were settled in the bend of the upper Hwang-ho and placed more or less under the protectorate of two
governors-general. Their leaders were admitted into the Chinese army, and the sons of their nobles lived at the imperial court. No doubt it was hoped in this way to turn the Turks into Chinese, as had been done with the
Toba, though for entirely different reasons. More than a milion Turks were settled in this way, and some of them actualy became Chinese later and gained important posts.
In general, however, this in no way broke the power of the Turks. The great Turkish empire, which extended as
far as Byzantium, continued to exist. The Chinese success had done no more than safeguard the frontier from a
direct menace and frustrate the efforts of the supporters of the Sui dynasty and the Toba dynasty, who had been living among the eastern Turks and had built on them. The power of the western Turks remained a lasting
menace to China, especialy if they should succeed in co-operating with the Tibetans. After the annihilation of the T'u-yü-hun by the Sui at the very beginning of the seventh century, a new political unit had formed in northern Tibet, the T'u-fan, who also seem to have had an upper class of Turks and Mongols and a Tibetan lower class.
Just as in t