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China Restoration of Empire
China was reunified in A.D. 589 by the short-lived Sui dynasty
(A.D. 581-617), which has often been compared to the earlier Qin
dynasty in tenure and the ruthlessness of its accomplishments. The
Sui dynasty's early demise was attributed to the government's
tyrannical demands on the people, who bore the crushing burden of
taxes and compulsory labor. These resources were overstrained in
the completion of the Grand Canal--a monumental engineering feat--
and in the undertaking of other construction projects, including
the reconstruction of the Great Wall. Weakened by costly and
disastrous military campaigns against Korea in the early seventh
century, the dynasty disintegrated through a combination of popular
revolts, disloyalty, and assassination.
The Tang dynasty (A.D. 618-907), with its capital at Chang'an,
is regarded by historians as a high point in Chinese civilization--
equal, or even superior, to the Han period. Its territory, acquired
through the military exploits of its early rulers, was greater than
that of the Han. Stimulated by contact with India and the Middle
East, the empire saw a flowering of creativity in many fields.
Buddhism, originating in India around the time of Confucius,
flourished during the Tang period, becoming thoroughly sinicized
and a permanent part of Chinese traditional culture. Block printing
was invented, making the written word available to vastly greater
audiences. The Tang period was the golden age of literature and art
(see Culture and the Arts
, ch. 4). A government system supported by
a large class of Confucian literati selected through civil service
examinations was perfected under Tang rule. This competitive
procedure was designed to draw the best talents into government.
But perhaps an even greater consideration for the Tang rulers,
aware that imperial dependence on powerful aristocratic families
and warlords would have destabilizing consequences, was to create
a body of career officials having no autonomous territorial or
functional power base. As it turned out, these scholar-officials
acquired status in their local communities, family ties, and shared
values that connected them to the imperial court. From Tang times
until the closing days of the Qing empire in 1911, scholarofficials functioned often as intermediaries between the grassroots level and the government.
By the middle of the eighth century A.D., Tang power had ebbed.
Domestic economic instability and military defeat in 751 by Arabs
at Talas, in Central Asia, marked the beginning of five centuries
of steady military decline for the Chinese empire. Misrule, court
intrigues, economic exploitation, and popular rebellions weakened
the empire, making it possible for northern invaders to terminate
the dynasty in 907. The next half-century saw the fragmentation of
China into five northern dynasties and ten southern kingdoms. But
in 960 a new power, Song (960-1279), reunified most of China
Proper. The Song period divides into two phases: Northern Song
(960-1127) and Southern Song (1127-1279). The division was caused
by the forced abandonment of north China in 1127 by the Song court,
which could not push back the nomadic invaders.
The founders of the Song dynasty built an effective centralized
bureaucracy staffed with civilian scholar-officials. Regional
military governors and their supporters were replaced by centrally
appointed officials. This system of civilian rule led to a greater
concentration of power in the emperor and his palace bureaucracy
than had been achieved in the previous dynasties.
The Song dynasty is notable for the development of cities not
only for administrative purposes but also as centers of trade,
industry, and maritime commerce. The landed scholar-officials,
sometimes collectively referred to as the gentry, lived in the
provincial centers alongside the shopkeepers, artisans, and
merchants. A new group of wealthy commoners--the mercantile class--
arose as printing and education spread, private trade grew, and a
market economy began to link the coastal provinces and the
interior. Landholding and government employment were no longer the
only means of gaining wealth and prestige.
Culturally, the Song refined many of the developments of the
previous centuries. Included in these refinements were not only the
Tang ideal of the universal man, who combined the qualities of
scholar, poet, painter, and statesman, but also historical
writings, painting, calligraphy, and hard-glazed porcelain. Song
intellectuals sought answers to all philosophical and political
questions in the Confucian Classics. This renewed interest in the
Confucian ideals and society of ancient times coincided with the
decline of Buddhism, which the Chinese regarded as foreign and
offering few practical guidelines for the solution of political and
other mundane problems.
The Song Neo-Confucian philosophers, finding a certain purity
in the originality of the ancient classical texts, wrote
commentaries on them. The most influential of these philosophers
was Zhu Xi (1130-1200), whose synthesis of Confucian thought and
Buddhist, Taoist, and other ideas became the official imperial
ideology from late Song times to the late nineteenth century. As
incorporated into the examination system, Zhu Xi's philosophy
evolved into a rigid official creed, which stressed the one-sided
obligations of obedience and compliance of subject to ruler, child
to father, wife to husband, and younger brother to elder brother.
The effect was to inhibit the societal development of premodern
China, resulting both in many generations of political, social, and
spiritual stability and in a slowness of cultural and institutional
change up to the nineteenth century
(see Traditional Society and Culture
, ch. 3). Neo-Confucian doctrines also came to play the
dominant role in the intellectual life of Korea, Vietnam, and
Japan.
Data as of July 1987
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