China

The Wudai (Five Dynasties)

None of the Wudai regimes that dominated northern China ever forgot the ideal of the unified empire. Each sought, with gradually increasing success, to strengthen the power of the central authorities. Even Zhu Wen, who began the Wudai by deposing the last Tang emperor in 907, sought to extend his control in the north. While consolidating his strength on the strategic plains along the Huang He (Yellow River) and connecting them with the vital transportation system of the Grand Canal, he made the significant choice of locating his base at Bian (present-day Kaifeng, in Henan); it later became the Bei (Northern) Song capital. Bian’s lack of historical prestige was balanced by its proximity to the ancient capital, Luoyang, a short distance to the west, which was still China’s cultural centre. Zhu Wen’s short-lived Hou (Later) Liang dynasty, founded in 907, was superseded by the Hou Tang in 923, by the Hou Jin in 936, by the Hou Han in 947, and by the Hou Zhou in 951. These rapid successions of dynasties came to an end only with the rise in 960 of the Song dynasty, which finally succeeded in establishing another lasting empire and in taking over much, though not all, of the former Tang empire.

Beneath the surface, however, were the continuous efforts to reintegrate the political process that heralded the coming of a new empire and helped to shape its political system. In this respect the successive rulers moved like a relay team along the tortuous road back to unification. These militarists expanded their personal power by recruiting peoples of relatively humble social origins to replace the aristocrats. Such recruits owed personal allegiance to their masters, on whose favours their political positions depended, thus presaging the rise of absolutism.

Rather than being discarded, the Tang administrative form underwent expedient alterations so that the new types of officials, promoted because of merit from regional posts to palace positions, could use the military administration to supervise the nearby provinces and gradually bring them under direct control. Top priority went to securing fiscal resources from the salt monopoly, tribute transport, and in particular new tax revenues, without which military domination would have been hard to sustain and political expansion impossible. Eventually, a pattern of centralizing authority emerged. Fiscal and supply officials of the successive regimes went out to supervise provincial finances and the local administration. The minor militarists, heretofore the local governors in control of their own areas, were under double pressure to submit to reintegrating measures. They faced the inducement of political accommodation, which allowed them to keep their residual power, and the military threat of palace army units commanded by special commissioners, which were sent on patrol duty into their areas. The way was thus paved, in spite of occasional detours and temporary setbacks, for the ultimate unification.

The seemingly chaotic period was in fact less chaotic than other rebellious times—except from the standpoint of the aristocrats, who lost their preeminent status along with their large estates, which were usually taken over piecemeal by their former managers. The aristocratic era in Chinese history was gone forever; a new bureaucratic era was about to begin.