The Everlasting Empire (13 page)

Such deference to a daughter would be unimaginable in a normative family in any other situation save the particular case in which the daughter shared some of the aura of the Son of Heaven and, on that basis, was her father’s superior. This short passage is perhaps more indicative of the emperor’s exaltedness than volumes of historical, philosophical, legal, and ritual writings. If the emanation of the emperor’s sacral aura could turn his minor concubine into a “phoenix,” while diminishing her proud father to the position of a “pigeon and crow,” little else needs to be said of the inconceivable loftiness of the monarchy in the subjects’ eyes.

Having clarified the sacral status of the emperorship, we are in a better position to understand Sima Guang’s above-cited statement. While not every subject invariably opted to “prostrate himself and accept death” when facing the emperor, it is true that compliance with the emperor’s orders was a norm even during a dynasty’s periods of weakness, when the court possessed neither efficient coercive apparatus nor sufficient material resources to reward their supporters. This ability of the imperial

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court to generate compliance allowed many dynasties to survive for decades against great odds.
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The sacral status of the emperor could be instrumental not just in preserving centralized rule, but also in strengthening its despotic potential. Insofar as the emperor was sacrosanct, any assault, however indirect, on his position could be interpreted as lèse-majesté, one of the “ten abominations.” Thus, while Chinese court etiquette welcomed and even at times prescribed “loyal criticism” directed against the throne, an outspoken critic always had to be wary of crossing an invisible line between legitimate remonstrance and criminal “great irreverence.” At times, the definition of this crime was broadened to produce some of the gloomiest manifestations of arbitrariness: the death penalty could be inflicted for a poem, for a careless usage of the emperor’s tabooed personal name, for insufficiently strict observation of mourning rules for an empress, for a potentially subversive examination question, and even for the “crime of criticizing [the ruler] in the stomach” (
fu fei zut
), or mere unspoken but presumed dissent.
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Although, as we shall see below, imperial tyranny was moderated through a variety of means, its intimidating presence behind the scenes of normal political life chilled the court atmosphere throughout the centuries.

Aside from its short-term impact in strengthening the imperial regime, the emperor’s superhuman status could contribute to long-term political stabilization, most notably in controlling the religious life of the realm. In this regard the emperor’s power exceeded that of monarchs elsewhere: he had the right to appoint, promote, or demote any deity of the official (and supposedly popular) pantheon; he could patronize or outlaw any cult, any type of religious ceremony, any scripture; he could approve or disapprove of the establishment of monasteries and temples, or demolish them altogether.
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While these prerogatives usually had only a marginal impact on popular religious activities, and even strict regulations with regard to monasteries and temples were rarely implemented to the letter, the very right of the political establishment to supervise the religious life of the populace gave it huge social power, which could be utilized, when necessary, to counter the potentially destabilizing effects of domestic or foreign religions. To illustrate this, I shall briefly address the empire’s relations with Buddhism, the single most powerful foreign religion that entered China and had a lasting effect on its history.

The complex story of Buddhism’s multifarious adaptation to Chinese culture and China’s adaptation to Buddhism has been told many times; here I focus exclusively on Buddhism’s political interaction with the imperial establishment. By the fourth-fifth centuries CE, as the alien creed gained huge popularity among all social strata, it appeared to have the momentum to reshape China much as Christianity did the Roman Em

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pire. This, however, is not what happened. While many emperors acted as devoted Buddhists, granted lavish gifts to monasteries and temples, and fervently performed Buddhist rites—one of them (Liang Emperor Wu, r. 502–549) even declared himself a monk for a short while—this did not change the basic pattern of relations between the throne and the Buddhist establishment (the
sangha
). The latter remained forever submissive and totally dependent on the emperors’ goodwill. Emperors could patronize the
sangha;
could employ the monks as diplomats or personal aides; but they could also restrict the activity of the
sangha
, regulate the size and location of the monasteries, and even intervene in such matters as the ordination of monks and monastic discipline.
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In a few cases, most notably in 841–845, the imperial state even outlawed Buddhism, suppressing or tremendously reducing the activities of the
sangha
.
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What is remarkable is the ease with which the state dictated its rules of the game to the powerful religious establishment. The latter could resent the emperor but could not openly defy his will.

It is within the realm of religion that the Chinese emperors appear particularly powerful in comparison with their Occidental counterparts. Even in the “Caesaropapist” Byzantine empire, the emperor’s intervention in substantial ecclesiastical matters, such as his support of iconoclasm in the eighth-ninth centuries, could cause considerable internal turmoil, if not outright rebellion.
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In China this never happened. The emperor was simply far more “divine” than any religious establishment; even proud monks had to acquiesce in his sacredness. A single example suffices to illustrate this. In 402, a powerful dictator and would-be usurper, Huan Xuan (369–404), demanded that the monks perform obeisance to the emperor. Huan Xuan claimed that bowing to the ruler was due not just politically but religiously: as monks owed their very existence to the emperor’s munificence, they should respect him as their father! Huan Xuan was eventually dissuaded from pressing the monks when his eminent opponent, Huiyuan (334–416), reminded him that since the monks ideologically did not cherish life at all and transcended normal human relations, the emperor’s gift of life was of minor significance to them. Notably, Huiyuan dared not question the emperor’s sacred role as the generator of universal life despite the obvious contradiction of this premise to the Buddhist worldview Nobody—not even the venerated religious teacher—could openly contradict a claim based on the emperor’s presumed sacredness; this issue was not open to religious counterclaims.
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Huan Xuan’s attempt to subjugate the
sangha
to the throne is indicative of the way in which the abstract convention of the emperor’s sacredness could be translated, under certain circumstances, into a powerful means of restraining the religious establishment. It is worth noting that

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the controversy took place under one of the weakest imperial regimes in China’s long history (Eastern Jin, 318–420), and that for its participants it was clear that what was at issue was not the sacredness of the soon-tobe-replaced reigning monarch, Emperor An of Jin (r. 397–403 and 404419 CE), who was a hapless puppet in Huan Xuan’s hands, and who could by no stretch of the imagination be considered the true source of life for all human beings. What mattered was the institutional principle of the emperor’s godlike position, and this principle was inviolable whoever occupied the throne.

This example prepares us to consider briefly other instances in which theoretical assertions of the emperor’s superiority could be translated into practical steps aimed at strengthening the throne, increasing sociopolitical stability, or moderating the power of potentially threatening social groups. Let us turn to the broader socioeconomic role of the emperors. It is useful to recall in this context a sentence from the canonical
Book of Songs
: “Everywhere under Heaven is the Monarch’s land, each of those who live on the land is the Monarch’s servant.”
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At first glance, this statement seems a hollow slogan or wishful thinking: after all, as is well known, de facto private ownership of land existed through much of China’s history, and the degree of the emperor’s rule over different groups of subjects varied considerably in space and time.
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Yet, once again, under certain circumstances activist emperors and courtiers could translate the abstract slogan into a reality and resolutely utilize their nominal power to regulate the society below.

Chinese history abounds in examples of bold initiatives undertaken by the throne, aimed at reshaping adverse social, economic, or cultural situations. Thus the imperial court could initiate far-reaching reforms of landownership, capping the size of individual plots of land or ordering massive reallocation of fields; it could create, redefine, or abolish hereditary social groups, from the aristocracy above to different types of outcasts below; it could profoundly reorganize rural and urban society, alter popular customs, change the subjects’ surnames, establish new cults and abolish the old, and otherwise intervene in all imaginable spheres of life. Surely, not all of these initiatives were equally successful, but rather than analyzing each of them separately, let us consider for a moment the boldness of some of the policy makers, who used the power of the throne in a conscious attempt to reshape radically the entire society.

Consider the actions of Emperor Xiaowen (r. 471–499) of the Northern Wei dynasty (386–534), established by the Tuoba nomads. In the second half of his reign, the emperor launched a series of profound reforms in the economy, social life, and even the people’s customs. The most important and the most successful of these reforms was the introduction of the “equal field” system, under which roughly equal (in terms of expected

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yield) plots of land were allocated to all peasant households; most of this land was alienable and redistributable according to the changing size of the household. In addition the emperor relocated the capital from the northern boundaries of the realm to the old Chinese heartland; imposed a series of radical measures aimed at “Sinicizing” his fellow tribesmen (even abolishing their polysyllabic names in favor of monosyllabic Chinese ones); and radically modified the composition of the high aristocracy. Not all of these measures were equally successful (some are believed to have directly contributed to the breakup of the Northern Wei a generation after the emperor’s death); nor did they pass unopposed. Yet while our sources do narrate considerable resentment against some of the emperor’s steps—from, among others, his closest kin—none of the opponents claimed that the emperor in principle had no right to abolish nomadic surnames, to outlaw steppe garments, or to intervene radically to alter landholding patterns.
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All these were prerogatives of the throne, which were rarely utilized, but which could suddenly turn into a means of creating an entirely new sociopolitical, economic, and cultural order.

Few reforms in China’s long history were as sweeping as those initiated by the Sinicized nomadic emperor Xiaowen. Many of the reforms undertaken by other emperors or, in their name, by powerful courtiers, were thwarted by a noncooperative bureaucracy or a noncompliant populace. Yet what matters for our discussion is the potential ability of the imperial court to initiate sweeping changes in any of the established practices. This suggests that the emperor’s role as a universal regulator was not a hollow image: if utilized prudently and properly it could become— and at times it did become—a major force capable of reshaping society and addressing various political, social, or economic challenges. More often than not these reforms were pursued by officials with only the technical consent of the monarch; but without the sacral aura of the emperorship and without the consensus in favor of the absolute power of the throne, such steps would have been unfeasible and most probably even unthinkable.

“CHECKS AND BALANCES” AND POWERLESS EMPERORS

In the aftermath of the dramatic fall of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) several eminent intellectuals, such as Gu Yanwu (1613–1682) and Huang Zongxi, identified the excessive centralization of power in the emperor’s hands as one of the major maladies of the imperial system as a whole and of the Ming dynasty in particular. In the early twentieth century these ideas were translated by thinkers such as Liang Qichao (1873–1929) into a novel interpretation of Chinese history as a continuous descent into the abyss of dictatorship. Later, the idea of the ever-aggravating “despotism”

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in imperial China was further reinforced by Chinese, Japanese, and Western scholars, and, despite many reservations, it still recurs in many studies, particularly in China.
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Yet despite this widespread view, in reality, as I shall demonstrate below, under most dynasties—in both the early and the late imperial period—the emperors’ weakness rather than excessive authoritarianism was the rule. To understand this paradox, I shall now address how the imperial bureaucrats were able to neutralize most of the occupants of the dragon throne without making institutional adjustments in the system of emperorship.

As I have argued above, from the Warring States period on, Chinese thinkers were aware of the dangers of the monarch’s ineptitude and of power abuse, and did their best to limit the negative impact of those factors by convincing the ruler to relegate his power to meritorious aides while preserving the semblance of omnipotence. The dissociation of the emperor from everyday government activities remained the latent desire of the imperial bureaucrats, who, as we shall see in the next chapter, were confident of their superior understanding of the realm’s true needs and were ready to run the empire in the ruler’s stead. This powerful bureaucratic stratum developed a variety of means aimed at reducing the monarch’s whims: from openly dissuading him from being politically active, to remonstrating and protesting against his specific acts, to withdrawing essential information or sabotaging his decisions. An assertive and astute emperor could have overturned any opposition in court, but the majority of the rulers sought to avoid open confrontation, fearing both severe political disruption and the blackening of their image in the eyes of contemporaries and posterity. Thus the bureaucrats’ power could serve as the most efficient antidote against monarchic excesses.
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