A History of China (31 page)

Barely twenty-six years old when he took power, Taizong overshadowed his father to become one of the most renowned monarchs in Chinese history. To many Chinese, Taizong would be revered as the quintessential emperor. They minimized his excesses and credited him with promoting a golden age in Chinese civilization. This view perhaps magnifies his role and fails to note that some of his policies and attitudes later generated serious problems.

Taizong achieved his greatest early successes as a military man, a career that shaped the first part of his reign. Thriftiness bred into him by military training caused him to condemn the lavishness of Sui projects and to seek to alleviate the burdens of taxes and corvée labor that the construction of elaborate palaces and other structures imposed upon the populace. Although he eventually succumbed to the desire for a luxurious court style, he still retained the image of a frugal and ascetic ruler. Asserting that his military background had offered him scant experience as an administrator, he professed interest in recruiting able officials to guide him. Like the ideal of the Confucian sage-ruler, he ­initially pledged to offer great leeway to his advisers. His brother-in-law Zhangsun Wuji (ca. 600–659) took the emperor at his word and thus played an active and, on occasion, decisive role in policy discussions. Wei Zheng (581–643) represented still another type of honest and competent counselor: the stern Confucian moralist who was blunt in his assessment of the emperor’s performance. Although Wei at times reprimanded the emperor, he was neither harassed nor requested to tone down his criticism. Accepting and tolerating such critiques from a strict moralist actually served the emperor’s interest because such behavior conformed to the Confucian model of proper relations between minister and ruler. Nonetheless, despite Taizong’s perception of the significance of Confucian civilian advisers, transition from military conquest and rule to a civilian government proved to be difficult. Indeed, such problematic transitions plagued many of the Chinese and specifically foreign dynasties that sought to rule China.

The principal concern of this prominent galaxy of ministers and of Taizong himself was to establish stable central and local administrations. They quickly restored the Sui system of three central offices in which the Secretariat wrote up edicts, the Chancellery analyzed them, and the six ministries of the Department of State Affairs carried them out. In both the central and local governments, Taizong and his ministers sought to control corruption, to limit the power of the aristocratic families who still attempted to dominate ­government, and to include more geographic areas in recruiting officials. They wished to rein in the aristocrats who controlled local government, as the resurgence of localism or at least of a decentralized authority concerned them. Under pressure to offer hereditary appointments to imperial princes and trustworthy ministers, Taizong occasionally consented to such commissions, which could lead to a concentration of power in local elite families, but his closest advisers, opposed to such devolution of authority, persuaded him to limit such grants in order to avert the restoration of localism. His emphasis on the revival of the civil-service examinations, with the successful candidates constituting a pool of competent men, was designed to provide him with officials to help gain control over local affairs from the aristocratic elite. Taizong himself interviewed and questioned the most advanced candidates as part of the examination process. Although he also instructed the Directorate of Education to set up schools to prepare promising individuals for the exams, the number of successful graduates was still insufficient for the government’s needs. Several decades would elapse before the exams became the principal supplier of officials. The civil-service examinations turned out to be one of the longest-lasting and most significant institutions in Chinese history. Abandoned only in 1905, they generated the bureaucracy that governed China. Because the examinations emphasized knowledge of Confucianism and the Confucian classics, they created an official class that often had Confucian cultural values.

Within a short time, the Tang also adopted a law code as part of ­restructuring the system. The Tang code, with some borrowings from earlier ones, was the earliest to be transmitted in toto to the present. In the early 620s, the first Tang emperor commissioned experts to devise the code, but three decades of assiduous efforts and critiques elapsed before it was proclaimed in 653. It would remain a standard for many future dynasties. Comprising twelve sections and over five hundred articles, it described offenses against the state, identifying transgressions of ordinary citizens and officials and specifying punishments for such offenses. The newly enacted code emphasized the individual’s responsibility to society, not his or her rights. Protection of civil liberties was not a principal concern. The major objective was to ascertain the truth at any cost, including the use of torture to elicit confessions. Once the alleged facts had been ­uncovered, a defendant had to prove his or her innocence. A presumption of innocence until proven guilty was not integral to the code. Magistrates conducted investigations and presided over trials, acting as both prosecutor and judge, while the defendant argued his or her own case without legal assistance.

The code devoted considerable space to offenses against the imperial family and the state, including entire sections on laws concerning trespassing in forbidden places (palaces, city gates, and frontier walls) and transgressions by officials. The code’s framers focused on state concerns such as taxes, land ­obligations, marriages of peasants, proper raising of troops, maintenance of stud farms and storehouses, and prevention of forgeries and counterfeiting. They also stressed order, emphasizing punishments for brawls and for offenses against individuals and property. Punishments depended on social status. Members of the elite received lesser punishments than ordinary Chinese for the same offenses. Joint responsibility could be invoked for what were ­perceived to be the most heinous offenses. Thus, family members who had no involvement could be punished if one of their kin were found guilty of treason or other high crimes. Punishments included flagellation with bamboo sticks, prison with hard labor, strangulation, decapitation, and death by slicing.

Meanwhile, the energetic Taizong proceeded to play an active role in strengthening his government. He pursued the Sui policy of organizing many of the empire’s adult males into militias (
fubing
) to guard local areas and the capital; these troops furnished their own supplies but were granted exemptions from taxes and corvée labor in return. He still needed more professional soldiers for his foreign expeditions, but the availability of a militia relieved his regular army to take part in external campaigns. The use of the militia also reduced expenditures and thus minimized the court’s burden of raising and collecting revenue. Most of its income derived from the equal-field system, but many in the elite were able to escape registration of their land and avoid taxation. The court also supplied grants of tax-exempt land to imperial princes, prominent civilian and military officials, and Buddhist and Daoist monasteries and Confucian temples and schools. Thus, the self-funded militia and the court’s own financial restraints averted a fiscal crisis, but the relative ineffectiveness of the equal-field system and Taizong’s inability to ensure its proper operation bequeathed a grave problem to later Tang rulers. One of his more successful ventures was reduction of the harshness of the legal code – for example, limiting the number of crimes for which capital punishment was mandated and demanding that officials send three separate reports about a case before actually executing anyone.

Having formulated policies for the militia, finances, and law, Taizong could turn his attention to cultural policy, which also had political implications. Because the Tang ruling family claimed descent from Laozi, Taizong was a generous patron of Daoism. Still, he had to adopt an even-handed policy toward the principal organized religions within the realm in order to ingratiate himself with every segment of the Chinese population. Thus, despite his misgivings about the Buddhist clergy and the minor restrictions he imposed upon the religion, he feared incurring the wrath of the increasingly affluent and powerful monks. His solution was to provide limited patronage to the Buddhists while endowing Daoist monks with benefactions unavailable to the Buddhists. His relations with Confucians were more direct and more positive. Needing skilled and educated counselors, he recognized the value of cultivating erudite Confucians. Having reinstituted the civil-service examinations, he also recruited scholars to write histories of the post-Han dynasties and devised the structure of an office of historiography. His support for Confucian scholars was also evident in his sponsorship of groups seeking to prepare standard editions of the classics and literary works. In essence, Taizong generally adopted the Sui policy of offering patronage to all three principal Chinese religions and philosophies, although he was less enthusiastic about Buddhism.

Taizong also continued the Sui initiatives in foreign relations, which entailed an expansionist policy. Such an aggressive posture can, in part, be explained by the disruptions and chaos of the three centuries prior to Sui rule, during which foreigners capitalized on China’s weakness to make incursions and even to establish dynasties on Chinese soil. An offensive policy could both deter such attacks and provide the Tang with buffer zones against any future foreign assaults. Scholars of the predominantly pastoral peoples living north of China offer still another explanation. They assert that the territories along the shared border of the Chinese and their neighbors consisted of land suitable for either cultivation or pasturage. Strong Chinese dynasties would seek to lay claim to this potentially arable land. Expansionism was also linked to control and protection of trade routes. Although the Tang, like other dynasties before and after, repeatedly asserted that China was economically self-sufficient, many Chinese benefited enormously from commerce. Trade and increased revenue for the court thus promoted attempts to safeguard routes and to control land beyond the Tang borders. Moreover, because Taizong himself aspired to be remembered as one of the most extraordinary rulers in the Chinese tradition, the enlargement of Chinese territory and the submission of foreigners would bolster his claims. Although the Chinese courts often disparaged and emphasized the emperor’s moral leadership, historians would frequently designate those emperors whose achievements resulted in a more powerful empire as “great.”

Thus, Taizong pursued an opportunistic and occasionally bellicose foreign policy, which was often successful, partly because of disarray among his neighbors. The eastern and western Turks were the first to experience turbulence, leading to civil wars and disastrous fragmentation (the fate of the primarily pastoral peoples north and west of China throughout much of recorded history). Capitalizing on a struggle between the khaghan and his nephew, Tang forces defeated the divided eastern Turks, occupying modern Inner Mongolia and the Ordos region and capturing the khaghan in 630. Similar divisions bedeviled the western Turks, who controlled the Tarim River oases along the Silk Roads to central and west Asia. Taking advantage of such tensions, Taizong ordered his forces to move expeditiously to dominate these vital halting places on the trade routes. This was no easy task, for a Tang army had to cross a vast stretch of inhospitable desert terrain in order to invade and lay claim to these fragile but significant sites.

In addition, Taizong was determined to control both the southern and northern Silk Roads, and this exacerbated the difficulties for his invading force. Yet, by the end of his reign, Chinese troops had consolidated their authority over the oases all the way to Kashgar. Quite a few non-Chinese merchants in the oases welcomed a Chinese presence because they wished to restore and doubtless surpass the trade of the glorious days of the Han dynasty. Thus Hami (the gateway to the northern routes) voluntarily acceded to Chinese rule in 630, and Khotan (an oasis on the southern routes that had vast quantities of white, black, and green jade) and Kashgar (the western juncture of the two routes) submitted in 632. However, Tang troops had to fight their way along the northern routes, reaching Kharashahr by 644 and Kucha by 648. This resounding success profoundly influenced not only the Tang’s economy but also its culture. Its control of the oases resulted in increased contact with other Asian civilizations and in a more cosmopolitan court. Safe passage permitted merchants, clerics, and entertainers to flock to China during the seventh and eighth centuries, bringing with them new goods, ideas, and technologies. China would be in touch with developments in Persia, India, and central Asia.

Taizong was somewhat less successful in relations with Tibet and Korea, but suffered no major disasters. Tibet achieved political unity at this very time. King Srong-btsan-sgam-po (605?–649) unified the previously autonomous peoples and, perceiving himself to be the equal of the Tang ruler, requested a marital alliance, which would bolster his legitimacy. Denied such a concession, the king raided Chinese border settlements until Taizong relented, and in 641 dispatched Princess Wencheng (d. 680), his niece, as a marriage partner for the Tibetan monarch. The Princess brought Buddhist texts and artifacts from China in an attempt to win over the king to a Chinese Buddhist sect. At the same time, a princess from the Indian subcontinent was sent in marriage to the Tibetan king to lure him to join an Indian Buddhist sect. The Jokkang, the oldest Buddhist temple in Tibet, was reputedly built to house the treasures brought by the two princesses. In the event, Taizong’s concession ushered in a period of peace, although tensions would erupt shortly after the Tang emperor’s death. Like his Sui predecessors, Taizong was obsessed with Korea. He sought to establish suzerainty over Korea or at least to install Silla, the Korean kingdom he supported, in power. These aims prompted him to lead two separate expeditions against the kingdom of Koguryo, his principal antagonist in Korea. Both campaigns ended in failure, and their squandering of resources provoked some unrest in China.