The Everlasting Empire (6 page)

Fhis said, the dominant tendency, especially during the empire’s second millennium, was toward increasing centralization of power, even at the expense of military and economic flexibility. In a pattern that we shall encounter in later chapters, the empire’s leaders opted for stability at the expense of efficiency. The accumulated historical experience taught them that substantial devolution of the court’s authority would sooner or later lead to the emergence of alternative loci of power and would inevitably bring about a new round of civil wars. Most imminently dangerous was relegation of military power to regional potentates. In the Han dynasty, it was employed to deal with internal rebels after 184 CE; in the Tang (618–906), to deal first with external and then with internal enemies; in the Western Jin (265–316), the Southern Dynasties (420–589), and, very briefly, in the beginning of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), it was undertaken to enhance the imperial family’s control over the military. The results invariably were the same: local military potentates, including the emperor’s closest kin, were soon raising arms either to defend or to expand their autonomy or even to replace the ruling dynasty. It is not surprising, therefore, that in the second imperial millennium the general tendency was to reduce the power of regional military leaders, even when this effectively left the court barely defended against external or internal foes. The First Emperor’s motto, “To reestablish princedoms means to sow weapons,” became a lasting, albeit not unanimously accepted, lesson of China’s history.

The overall commitment of the empire’s leaders to stability did not preclude experiments aimed at enhancing the efficiency of regional rule within the rigidly centralized framework. One of the most interesting breakthroughs in this regard was achieved at the very end of the imperial period, when the Qing dynasty (1644–1912) introduced the system of provincial governors as mediators between the imperial center and the lower tiers of local administration. Leaders of earlier dynasties were generally averse to permanent administrative units above the prefecture (commandery) level; and when such units were formed, this usually signified the weakness of the imperial center (see, below, the example of the Tang dynasty). Yet a series of experiments that began under the Mongol Yuan dynasty (1271–1368) and continued throughout several centuries brought

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about the formation of a supraprefecture tier, the province, as a fully functioning unit of regional rule. The Manchu (Manju) Qing emperors, who, like the Mongols, were habitually inclined to delegate their power to the underlings, proved that controlled decentralization is workable: eventually, Qing provincial governors played a crucial role in the overall success of that dynasty in the first half of its rule. After two millennia, the empire’s builders seem finally to have discovered a proper balance between the dictates of administrative efficiency and those of stable centralized rule.
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FROM DISINTEGRATION TO REUNIFICATION

The architects of the Chinese empire provided it with sophisticated ideological justification and with elaborate administrative tools aimed at sustaining unity, but none of these means could permanently prevent repeated disintegrations. Two political players were latently subversive of the imperial unity: regional elites and local potentates. The first of the two were less dangerous politically, since their goal was usually to protect local interests through enhancing their representation in the empire’s administrative apparatus rather than disengaging from it. However, during periodic crises when local elites felt that the government did not heed their voices and the tax collectors disregarded their vested economic interests, they could shift their support to a local rebellious leader and challenge the court. Without their support, few local potentates could succeed in their “subversive” activities.

These local potentates—either military or civilian leaders, either the emperor’s kin and fellow tribesmen, or even former rebels who were granted provincial authority in exchange for their submission—were the most formidable rivals of the central government in times of crisis. Normally, local governors were not natives of the area under their control and were not supposed to serve lengthy terms in a single locality. In times of lax control, however, a governor could occupy his position long enough to ingratiate himself with local elites, for instance by appointing their members to positions in his administration and by reducing the amount of tax revenue sent to the central government. Such a governor could emerge in an age of domestic turmoil as a natural leader of his province (or quasi-provincial territorial unit), a position that he could then turn into a springboard for establishing a new dynasty. Thus the de facto secession of provinces remained an almost inevitable outcome of major domestic crises well into the twentieth century. However, as I shall demonstrate below, centrifugal forces were of limited vitality; and after disintegration reached its apogee, a move back to the center invariably ensued.

To illustrate the cycle of disintegration and reunification in Chinese history, I shall focus on the Tang dynasty, the long decline of which exemplifies many of the empire’s basic functioning principles. Tang sue

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ceeded to and inherited the centralizing tendencies of the preceding Sui dynasty (581–618), which had reunified China after a long period of fragmentation. The political elite of the Tang was strongly disinclined to allow renewed decentralization, and even succeeded in thwarting the plans of the second Tang emperor, Taizong (r. 626–649), who proposed establishing autonomous princedoms.
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During the first century of its rule, the Tang may have been more centralized than any preceding dynasty since the Qin.

The decentralization of Tang rule came about as a by-product of its initial military and diplomatic successes, which brought about unprecedented territorial expansion. The need to provide swift military response to mobile enemies at the remote northern and western frontiers facilitated the establishment of a system of military commissioners (
jiedushi
). The commissioners controlled a relatively large area comprising several border prefectures; they were allowed to mobilize the human and economic resources of the subordinate prefectures, combining thereby military and civilian functions; they served for lengthier periods than ordinary officials, had the right to appoint subordinates, and enjoyed a high degree of operational autonomy. In its quest for military effectiveness, the Tang court thus sacrificed much of the empire’s traditional caution with regard to autonomous power-holders.
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The court soon had to pay a high price for its lenience. When a powerful
jiedushi
, An Lushan (d. 757), found himself in a rivalry with the prime minister, he rebelled in 755 and dealt the dynasty a dreadful blow, briefly occupying both capitals, Luoyang and Chang’an (modern Xi’an). To survive, the court had to build a coalition of loyal military commanders, which eventually brought about a proliferation of the
jiedushi
system into the interior provinces. For the next century and a half, the emperors of the Tang dynasty faced a new situation characterized by the rise of powerful military leaders who evolved into full-scale governors of the newly formed circuits (or “provinces,” a supraprefecture tier of local administration). The degree of the governors’ loyalty to the court varied considerably, but they uniformly acted to expand their power at the court’s expense: specifically, they tried to monopolize civil and military appointments in the area under their control, to reduce tax remittance to the central court, and to secure lifelong or even hereditary tenure for themselves. While not all of them were equally determined to pursue this course, the empire nonetheless soon developed into a conglomerate of more or less autonomous territorial units, with separate armies, and to a lesser extent separate systems of administration and financial management. Powerless, the court could manipulate the governors and employ them against one another, but it was no longer able to abolish completely the system of provincial autonomy.
³⁴

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The beleaguered dynasty responded to the crisis with remarkable ingenuity, reforming its financial system and effectively employing alien tribesmen, most notably the Uighurs, to augment its weakened military forces.
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Yet it seems that the primary reason behind its survivability in the prolonged struggle against the governors was its exclusive position as the supreme arbiter, even if not necessarily the true manager of “Allunder-Heaven.” Insofar as there was no alternative to the principle of a singularly legitimate “universal” monarch, autonomous governors could not “secede” in a modern sense. Unless they were willing and able to position themselves as founders of a new dynasty (an exceptional step), the governors continued to recognize the superiority of the Tang emperor, even when defying his orders. They continued to employ the Tang calendar, ritual paraphernalia, and administrative vocabulary, and sought imperial confirmation of their position. Even the rebellious governors of Hebei, the hotbed of An Lushan’s uprising, continued to maintain relations with the Tang court, seeking a position akin to that of foreign tributaries, whose ritual submission to the emperor had to be recompensed with imperial recognition of their full-scale autonomy in domestic affairs (more on this below).

Scholars sometimes understand the autonomous governors’ ritual submission to the emperor as a mere veneer of full-scale independence, but this is imprecise. Ritual inferiority significantly impaired the possibility of a local unit’s long-term autonomy. In exchange for his recognition of a local potentate’s legitimacy, a prudent emperor could demand the potentate’s military assistance, increased tax remittance, or acceptance of the imperial center’s nominees to some of the posts within the restive province. Indeed, the Tang court was skillful enough to translate its symbolic power into partial regeneration of centralized control; by the second third of the ninth century, the center reestablished a meaningful presence in all but a very few circuits.
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However, beginning in the 870s, a series of military mutinies and popular uprisings shattered Tang’s sociopolitical fabric anew, facilitating the reemergence of full-scale regional autonomy under ruthless military leaders, many of whom came from among the rebel ranks. Once again a coalition of loyal governors crushed the rebels; but this time the court was unable to regain the initiative and restore its fortunes.
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The major reason for the Tang dynasty’s final demise was internal: mired in the debilitating struggle between eunuchs and officials, the imperial court failed to utilize its ritual superiority to subdue the governors. The last decades of Tang rule were a sad story of inadequate emperors languishing as hapless pawns in the hands of rival potentates. Disintegration intensified: dozens of rival military governors became entangled in an endless game of wars and alliances, in comparison to which even the

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turmoil of the Warring States period looks like orderly rule. On the evidence of contemporaneous historical chronicles, one might easily conclude that reunification of the completely fragmented realm was utterly impossible.
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The de facto disintegration became a fait accompli in 907, when the powerful governor and former rebel Zhu Wen (852–912) delivered the coup de grace to the Tang, establishing his new, Later Liang dynasty (907–923). Zhu Wen’s coup was ill-timed, however, coming after several military setbacks. Zhu Wen tried to bolster his position with an elaborate legitimation campaign, but neither performance of imperial rituals, nor manipulation of portents and omens, nor even his belated—and somewhat surprising, in light of his notorious ruthlessness—display of respect for Confucian scholarship could compensate for the weakness of his armies. Zhu Wen’s foes refused to recognize his rule and established several independent regional regimes, elevating themselves to the positions of kings or emperors, and inaugurating thereby the de facto disintegration of the realm.
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The ongoing disintegration had been briefly checked in 923, when the Shatuo Turk leader, Li Cunxu (885–926), the self-proclaimed restorer of the Tang dynasty, inflicted a surprising defeat on the Later Liang, unified much of northern China, and even established partial or full authority over some of the southern parts of the realm. However, Li’s ineptitude in domestic affairs caused his regime to disintegrate rapidly, and the reunification momentum was lost. Even in the northern part of the realm the unification remained thereafter highly vulnerable owing to ongoing internecine struggles among local military leaders, which ended only with the ascendancy of the Song dynasty in 960. More interesting were political dynamics in the south, where seven relatively stable states emerged in the Yangzi basin and southward. Although founded mostly by former rebels, these states gradually attained relative, even if never lasting, stability; their economy (and occasionally arts and culture) prospered, population increased, and their general situation remained more attractive than that of the war-plagued north. In terms of size, topography, economic and military resources, and the like, each of these states could well have become an independent and well-functioning unit. Nonetheless, this transformation did not occur, as eventually all these states were easily destroyed by the Song. What factors hindered their independence and allowed swift Song victory?
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I believe that lack of viability characterized not just regional states as such but the multistate order itself. This order was moribund not only because it was ideologically unacceptable, but no less significantly because it time and again proved to be unsustainable. The problem was not just the lack of adequate means to ensure long-term peaceful coexistence