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Chapter 12
Reunification and Renaissance in
Chinese Civilization: The Era of the
Tang and Song Dynasties
The Sui-Tang Era
• Wendi, a member of a prominent Chinese noble family,
struck a marriage alliance between his daughter and
the ruler of the Zhou empire
• Seized the empire of his son-in-law and proclaimed
himself emperor
• Further strengthened by his son Yangdi, who murdered
his father to reach throne
• When Yangdi was assassinated, it looked as if China
would return to the state of political division
• This led to the emergence of the Tang and the
restoration of the Empire
The Tang dynasty
• Li Yuan and his second son, Tang Taizong, laid the basis for the
golden age of the Tang
• Tang armies conquered deep into central Asia as far as present-day
Afghanistan
• Tang emperors completed repairs begun by the Sui and earlier
dynasties on the Great Wall and created frontier armies
• The frontier armies gradually became most potent military units in
the empire
• The sons of Turkic tribal leaders were sent to the capital as hostages
to guarantee good behavior of the tribe in question
• At the Tang capital, they were educated in Chinese ways in the hope
of their eventual assimilation into Chinese culture
The Tang Dynasty
• The empire extended into Tibet in the west, the
Red River valley homeland of the Vietnamese in
the south, and Manchuria in the north
• The Yangtze River basin and much of the south
were fully integrated with north China for the first
time since the Han
• The Tang had a larger empire than the Han whose
boundaries were beyond present-day China
The Tang Dynasty
• Political power in China was shared by a succession of
imperial families and bureaucrats of the civil service
system
• Members of the hereditary aristocracy continued to
occupy administrative positions, but the scholar-gentry
class staffed most of the posts in the secretariats and
executive department that oversaw a huge
bureaucracy
• One secratariat drafted imperial decrees; another
monitored the reports of regional and provincial
officials and the petitions of local natables
• Executive department was divided into six ministries
Growing Importance of the
Examination System
• The numbers of the educated scholar-gentry rose in the Tang
era
• The examination system was greatly expanded
• The Ministry of Rites administered several kinds of examinations
to students from government schools or those recommended
by distinguished scholars
• Those who passed the latter earned the title of jinshi
• The jinshis’ families’ positions were secured by the prospect of
high office that was opened by their success
• Even though Tang bureaucrats won their positions through
success in civil service exams, birth and family connections
continued to be important in securing high office
• Ethic and regional ties played a role in staffing bureaucratic
departments
State and Religion
• Many of the rulers in the pre-Tang era were devout
Buddhists and strong patrons of the Buddhist
establishment
• The combination of royal patronage and widespread
conversion at both the elite and mass levels made
Buddhism a strong, economic, and political force
• No Tang ruler matched Empress Wu in supporting the
Buddhist establishment
• By the mid-9th century, there were nearly 50,000
monastaries and hundreds of thousands of Buddhist
monks and nuns in China
The Anti-Buddhist Backlash
• Daoist monks tried to counter Buddhism’s
appeals to the masses by stressing their own
magical and predictive powers
• The growing campaign of Confucian scholaradministrators was most damaging to Buddhism
• Because monastic lands and resources were not
taxed, the Tang regime lost huge amounts of
revenue
• The state denied labor power because it could
not tax or conscript peasants
The Anti-Buddhist Backlash
• State fears of Buddhist wealth and power led to measures
to limit the flow of land and resources to the monastic
orders
• Under Emperor Wuzong, these restrictions grew to open
persecution of Buddhism
• Chinese Buddhism weakened
• The great age of Buddhist painting and cave sculptures gave
way to art dominated by Daoist and Confucian subjects and
styles in the late Tang nad the Song dyanstic era that
followed
• Buddhism left its mark on the arts, the Chinese language,
and Chinese thinking about things like heaven, charity, and
law
Tang Decline
• After the controversial but strong rule by
Empress Wu, a second attempt to control the
throne was made by a highborn woman who
married into the family
• Empress Wei poisoned her husband, and
placed her child on the throne
• Her attempt was thwarted by another prince,
who led a revolt that ended her and her
supported
The Song Dynasty
• Tang and the Song ruled from the early 7th century to the
late 13th century.
• Hangzhou is the capitol of the Song rulers.
• By late Song times, Hangzhou had more than a million and
a half residents and was famed for its wealth, cleanliness,
and the number and variety of diversions it offered.
• The good life in cities such as Hangzhou was made possible
by the large, well-educated bureaucracy that had governed
China for centuries.
• Centralized control and a strong military brought long
periods of peace, during which the ruling elites
promoted technological innovation, agrarian expansion,
and commercial enterprise at both home and overseas
The Song Dynasty
• Zhao, renamed Taizu, founded the Song dynasty, which
was to rule for the next 3 centuries.
• Liao dynasty was founded by the Khitan people.
• The dynasty was plagued.
• Beginning in 1004, the song were forced by military
defeats at the hand of Khitans to sign a series of
treaties with the northern neighbors.
• The treaties committed the Song to pay a heavy tribute
to the Liao dynasty to keep it from raiding and keep it
from conquering the Song domains.
• The Khitans saw the Song dynasty culturally superior
The Song Dynasty
• The early Song rulers promoted the interests
of the Confucian scholar-gentry.
• Exams were given every 3 years at 3 levels:
district, provincial, and imperial.
• Song examiners passed a far higher
percentage than the Tang examiners.
The Song Dynasty
• Zhu Xi stressed the importance o
applying philosophical principals to everyday life and
action.
• Neo-Confucians believed that cultivating personal
mortality was the highest goal for humans.
• The Neo-Confucian emphasis on rank, obligation,
deference, and traditional rituals reinforced class, age,
and gender distinctions, particularly as they were
expressed in occupational roles.
• They believed that historical experience was the best
guide for navigating the uncertain terrain of the future.
The Song Dynasty
• By mid 11th-century, Tangut tribes had established a kingdom named Xi
Xia.
• For protection, The Song had to pay a great drain on the resources of the
empire and a growing burden for the Chinese peasantry.
• The cost of the army was burdensome
• In, addition weapons needed upgraded, and fortifications needed
repaired.
• In the 1070s and early 1080s, Wang Anshi tried to ward off the impending
collapse of the dynasty by introducing sweeping reforms.
• Wang tried to correct the grave defects in the imperial order.
• Wang introduced cheap loans and government-assisted irrigation
projects.
• He taxed landlords and scholarly classes.
• Wang tried to reorganize university education and reorient the
examination system.
The Song Dynasty
• In 1085, the Shenzong emperor died.
• The Neo-Confucians came to power ended reform, and
reserved many of Wang's initiatives.
• In 1115, the Jurchens overthrew the Liao dynasty of
the Khitans and established the Jin kingdom.
• After successful invasions of the Song territory, the
Jurchens annexed most of the Yellow River basin to
what had become the Qin empire.
• These conquests forced the Sonf to flee to the south.
• Southern Song dynasty (1167- 1279).
The Song Dynasty
• The Grand Canal was designed to link the original
centers of Chinese civilization on the north China
plain with the Yangtze River basin.
• The Grand Canal was intended to facilitate
control over the southern regions by courts,
bureaucracies, and armies centered in ancient
imperial centers.
• By the time the Grand Canal was finished, more
than a million forced laborers had worked, and
many had died, on its locks and embankments.