The Imperial Era: II
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. 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, scholar-officials functioned often
as intermediaries between the grass-roots 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 ( b1130-1200), 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. Neo-Confucian doctrines also came to play the dominant role in the
intellectual life of Korea, Vietnam, and Japan.
Ringling Asian Art Center.
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