A History of China (35 page)

This cultural efflorescence in Buddhism and in the arts was offset by the ­turbulence of the imperial succession and the political disruptions of the late seventh and early eighth centuries. Only with the accession of Emperor Xuanzong in 712 did the political and economic problems of the dynasty temporarily recede. The new emperor was an able, intelligent monarch who tried to cope with the dynasty’s financial difficulties. The ultimate failure of this remarkable ruler offered stark evidence of the Tang’s decline. Having come to power via a coup, he was able to bring into office his own supporters, most of them graduates of the civil-service examinations and free of the corruption that had tainted Tang government since Empress Wu’s reign.

Xuanzong’s early policies aimed to establish more stability and less capriciousness in decision making at the court. With the advice of able Confucian counselors and ministers, he tried to restrict the political influence of the ­families and allies of his own consorts and of the eunuchs, to limit the building of Buddhist and Daoist monasteries, to prevent monks from meddling in government, and to reduce the inordinately heavy tax burden on the peasantry. In the first years of his reign, Xuanzong implemented some of these reforms. He introduced regular and orderly, rather than arbitrary, processes in government; he periodically moved his entourage to Luoyang, which was closer to the food-producing regions; he sought to reduce court expenses, which had spiraled upward since the relatively austere reign of Taizong; he appointed civil-service graduates to both central and provincial-level positions; he weeded out wealthy individuals who had been ordained as monks in order to evade taxation; and he attempted to restrict the amount of tax-free land and to register households, particularly wealthy ones, that had evaded taxation.

Like many other reform efforts throughout Chinese history, Xuanzong’s attempts at change faced considerable obstacles. Wang Mang of the Han and, later, Wang Anshi of the Song, as well as other reformers, confronted many of the same difficulties. They all sought change via entrenched government officials and bureaucrats who either were profiting from the existing system or were allied with landlords and others who also benefited from the status quo. To be sure, the reformers recruited likeminded officials and appointed supporters to government positions, but they still needed the assistance of the regular bureaucracy if they were to be effective. Their dependence on the bureaucracy weakened attempts at reform. The prevailing ideology also contributed to their dilemmas, for Confucianism emphasized proper selection of competent and morally ­superior men, rather than changes in institutions or adoption of new policies, as the means to a good government and society. Reformers would be subject to criticism for according precedence to institutions over men, and such criticism would help to justify those entrenched interests in the government who opposed the reforms. Because reformers could not conceive of (and the institutional ­structure did not lend itself to) cultivating support from groups beyond the bureaucracy, the reformers faced an uphill battle in seeking implementation of their new ­policies. Even a fair trial of their innovations on a small scale was precluded, both because such experiments would necessitate a differing and nonstandard application of edicts and because of the undiminished opposition of and possible subversion by the bureaucracy in the site selected for these trials. The nexus of bureaucrats, landlords, and other allies often subverted reforms.

For Xuanzong, other problems also intervened. Imperial relatives appear to have concocted at least one plot against him, which he deflected, subsequently either exiling or executing the plotters. Xuanzong faced an even greater quandary in coping with the empire’s finances. The farming of unregistered land by peasants and the creation by officials and landlords of ever-larger estates, which routinely secured tax exemptions, constricted the court. To cope with this quandary, Yuwen Rong (d. 730–731), one of Xuanzong’s ministers, developed a program that offered six tax-free years if peasants registered their lands. Quite a few peasants took advantage of this generous offer, but Yuwen Rong himself alienated other officials and members of the imperial family and finally fell victim to a cabal, which persuaded the emperor to exile him. Other ­reformers – who sought fairness for nonelite candidates in the civil-service examinations; more-inclusive registration of households on the tax rolls; a better, speedier, and less expensive system of grain transport to the capital; and more direct control over local areas – followed him. Again and again, however, conflicts at court between the bureaucracy and the old aristocracy arose, often undercutting these efforts.

After this bureaucratic infighting, Li Linfu (d. 753) emerged as the most ­influential minister from 736 to 752 and thus as the architect of the last significant measure meant to bolster Xuanzong’s rule. Yet Li’s simultaneous attempt to strengthen his own position at court ultimately undermined his effectiveness. As part of the old aristocracy, Li was determined to deal realistically with the consequences of the failures of the equal-field system. First, acknowledging that the militia system (
fubing
), based upon three years of military service for adult males who received land grants, was not working well, he turned instead to the creation of a professional army. The ideal of a low-cost militia had not operated satisfactorily; Li’s professional force initially turned out to be more effective, as it decisively defeated the Tibetans (for example). Yet it gave considerable authority to the military governors stationed along the frontiers and was extremely expensive. Second, Li sought to raise additional income by persisting with Yuwen Rong’s efforts at the registration of land, but evasion of taxes remained a serious problem and exacerbated the Tang’s revenue shortfalls. Third, Li introduced administrative changes, but his own jockeying for power and his purging of potential and legitimate rivals lent a striking irregularity and instability to the court. In effect, his attempts to bolster the Tang’s military and revenue base actually weakened the dynasty.

However, there were no significant retreats or defeats in the dynasty’s ­foreign relations. There were also no resounding successes, but China generally maintained an equilibrium with its neighbors. Moreover, China still had the respect of other civilizations in east Asia – respect demonstrated by their emulation of Tang institutions. In its efforts at centralization in the seventh century, Japan had borrowed, with significant modifications, many Tang administrative and fiscal practices and had even adopted the Chinese characters for the Japanese written language. Embassies from Japan continued to arrive during Xuanzong’s reign, bolstering China’s prestige. In Korea, during the reign of King Kyongdok (r. 742–764), government offices were modeled on those of the Tang. Buddhist monks studied in China and returned to Korea with new ideas, texts, and artifacts, which clearly influenced the culture of the Silla kingdom. The Buddhist grottoes at Sokkuram on the outskirts of the capital at Kyongju, highlighted by the pure, simple, and beautiful white stone statue of the Shakyamuni Buddha, were no doubt inspired by the Yungang and Longmen caves.

Chinese relations with Tibet were less satisfactory, as the two sides remained adversaries. In 715, Tang forces had defeated a Tibetan army in Ferghana, but within a year Tibetan troops were conducting forays reaching to the Tarim River basin oases, which were vital for China’s continued commerce in central Asia. In 722, Tibetan forces moved into Little Balur, which lay along the principal routes from Kashgar to the Indus valley. The Tang responded in the same year, dispatching an army from Kashgar that wrested control of the region from the Tibetans and thus safeguarded China’s route to the west. Some Tang officials feared, in particular, the possibility of an alliance between the Tibetans and the Arabs, who had been spreading eastward after their conversion to Islam and were fast becoming a major force in central Asia (between the Tibetans and the western Turk peoples – another potentially dangerous threat to China’s frontiers). Despite pleas from one of his commanders to seek a compromise so as to reduce expenditures on defense, Xuanzong maintained a hostile stance toward Tibet until 730, when the Tibetans, faced with military campaigns in the west, consented to an agreement that delineated their common borders and permitted trade along the frontiers. Yet, within five years, hostilities erupted once again, and both sides reneged on their agreement, as the Tibetans and the western Turks joined together to resist the Tang. A decade of standoffs ended with the arrival of Gao Xianzhi (d. 756), a Tang commander of Korean descent, who decisively defeated the Tibetans in the late 740s. By 755, when the Tibetan king was murdered by a cabal of ministers, leading to disruptions and turbulence, it appeared that the Tang had finally gained the upper hand in its disputes with the Tibetans over territory and trade.

The Tang registered the same ambiguous results in relations with central Asia and Mongolia. Early in Xuanzong’s reign, the western Turks dominated much of central Asia, particularly after their Khan Sulu halted the Arab armies seeking to conquer ever eastward. On several occasions, he supported oases along the Silk Roads in achieving independence from China. Like many other nomadic rulers, however, he could not forge unity among his retainers, and eventually one assassinated him, leading to warfare and the weakening of the Turks and facilitating the Tang’s efforts to maintain influence and perhaps control the oases and trade routes to the west. Similarly, the eastern Turks were overwhelmed by disunity, with the defections and assassinations of important leaders characterizing their history in the eighth century. The Tang faced no threats from them. Finally, the Uyghurs, one of the groups in the eastern Turkish confederation, broke away and established their own identity. A more sedentary group with a capital city in Karabalghasun, they engaged in a lively trade with the Tang via the tribute system – again a peaceful resolution of a potentially troublesome border conflict.

The Tang established peace along its northeastern frontiers. The Khitans, a group from Manchuria that would later play a significant role in east Asian history, were intermittently hostile, but they did not make any dramatic incursions into China. Parhae (in Chinese, Bohai), another state in eastern Manchuria, ruled by a commander of the extinguished state of Koguryo, arose in the last decade of the seventh century and, on occasion, challenged Tang forces along the frontiers. However, by the mid eighth century, Parhae had become increasingly sinicized, adopting Chinese political institutions and even the Chinese language. Although Parhae remained an autonomous state, it fit in nicely with the Chinese world order, abiding by the tributary system in order to secure trade.

Xuanzong and his minister Li Linfu appeared thus to have stabilized China’s frontiers without abandoning the territory acquired by earlier Tang emperors. The underlying domestic problems of the dynasty, which included revenue shortfalls and fractious infighting at the court as well as the resulting purges and instability, had been somewhat concealed during Li’s tenure as the dominant figure at the capital. However, the eighth-century attempts at reform had not noticeably improved the dire financial and administrative straits that the Tang faced. Li’s death in 753, after years of control at the court, exacerbated China’s problems of leadership, but even before then the reign of Xuanzong had been veering toward turbulent times.

Traditional Chinese scholars have sometimes attributed this decline to changes in the emperor himself. Since the early 740s, he had become increasingly diverted from court affairs by fascination with Daoism and Esoteric Buddhism. He not only became an ardent patron of the two religions but was also attracted by their emphasis on meditation and transcendence of earthly concerns – certainly not auspicious qualities for a secular ruler. Traditional sources also accuse him of neglecting official duties because of his passion for his consort, Yang Yuhuan (719–756; better known by her title Yang Guifei or “precious consort Yang”), who exerted considerable authority at court and insinuated her own relatives into government. To be sure, the deflection of Xuanzong’s interests from affairs of state contributed to the mid-eighth-century crisis, but no single ruler, however much attention he paid to governance, could have stemmed the tide without substantial institutional and political changes.

Such trends in Tang administration and finances did not, in any case, depend on any specific emperor. They often superseded any individual ruler and cannot be identified with one. The rulers frequently did not devise policies and simply supported their officials’ plans. Although it is sometimes convenient to describe these developments in the context of specific reigns, these trends were ongoing throughout the years of several emperors. Blaming or praising a specific emperor for events is not historically accurate. Reforms in the registration of land, the collection of taxes, and the recruitment of a military force were vital, yet the Tang, not Xuanzong alone, could not cope with these problems amid a series of foreign-policy disasters in the early 750s, which resulted in the most severe challenge to the dynasty’s very survival.

Unconnected military defeats in the early 750s revealed the weakness of the Tang armies and the growing power of the peoples and states along China’s borderlands. In 751, Gao Xianzhi, who had earlier defeated the Tibetans and the western Turks and affirmed the Chinese presence along the Silk Roads oases, suffered a crushing blow near the Talas River in central Asia at the hands of an invading Arab army. The same year another Tang force was overwhelmed by the troops of the southwestern kingdom of Nanzhao (located in the modern province of Yunnan) and the Khitans vanquished a sizable Chinese army led by An Lushan. At this juncture, Li Linfu’s health was deteriorating, and he died shortly thereafter, permitting Yang Guifei’s cousin, Yang Guozhong (d. 756), to ascend to the leading position at court. During his brief tenure, Yang ­alienated many officials, including the military governors along the frontiers.