A History of China (32 page)

Taizong’s mostly positive legacy did not extend to the succession to the throne. Machinations by unscrupulous court officials, as well as by several of his own ambitious sons, resulted in the crowning of one of his least able sons. Taizong himself contributed to this chaotic state of affairs. Appalled by his designated heir’s infatuation with Turkish dress and lifestyle and by his homosexual liaison, he had his son’s partner executed. The son tried to avenge himself, planning to assassinate one of his brothers, but the plot was discovered and Taizong stripped his son of the succession and exiled him. Later he was compelled to exile still another son and possible heir for involvement in yet another plot. His ministers eventually pressured him to appoint his son Li Zhi as his successor. His unease about this appointment proved prophetic.

Li Zhi, under the reign title Gaozong (628–683), seemed to preside over a prosperous China, but appearances were deceptive. An indecisive and weak person, he actually ruled for only a brief part of his reign, as strong officials and one of his empresses wielded power in his name. The Chinese economy of his time seemed to be booming, with relative peace enabling peasants to focus on the land and to increase agricultural production and with foreign merchants beginning to arrive in larger numbers to trade for Chinese products and to make available to the Tang elite an astonishing variety of goods. In addition, domestic regional trade resulted in the establishment of new towns and cities dependent upon commerce. Yet the government’s fiscal underpinning was shaky because the equal-field system, the mainstay of court revenue, was not operating properly. It required registration of all who either worked or owned land. Yet administrative incompetence, corruption, and resistance meant that barely half of China’s households had been registered by Gaozong’s time, and the rest simply evaded taxes, imperiling the government’s ability to meet its fiscal obligations for court, military, public-works, and bureaucratic expenditures. However, despite these problems looming on the horizon, China experienced no major catastrophes during Gaozong’s reign.

His era is inextricably linked with the ascendancy of Empress Wu ­(624–705), the only woman to rule China in her own right. Because Empress Wu represented the antithesis of the most cherished values of the Confucian elite, her reputation in the traditional Chinese accounts is unenviable. These works depict her as ruthless, vindictive, and cruel and accuse her of pitiless and vengeful crimes ranging from purging and exiling her opponents to almost unimaginable brutality, including the suffocation of her infant daughter. Such characterizations should probably be somewhat discounted, for they reflect Confucian scholar-elite antipathy toward women in public life and toward what they perceived to be political machinations that violated Confucian morality. Naturally, this assertive and no doubt unsavory woman was cast in the most negative light.

A concubine at the court of Taizong, Wu adroitly maneuvered to gain power. She appears to have attracted the young Gaozong’s attention and was thus able to avert the typical fate of concubines upon an emperor’s death: consignment to a Buddhist nunnery. Shortly after his accession, Gaozong brought her back to court as one of his concubines. From her base at the court, she sought to attract allies in her effort to undermine Gaozong’s empress and to have herself elevated to that position. According to the not unbiased Chinese histories, she killed her own daughter, making it appear that the empress was the murderess. Probably more important, she gave birth to a son, providing the emperor with an heir and giving her greater leverage in her rivalry with the empress. As a result, Gaozong raised her to the status of empress, enabling her finally to eliminate her rival. The histories revile her for supposedly having the former empress executed in a grisly manner. The executioner reputedly cut off the former empress’ arms and legs, allowing her to bleed to death painfully. A few influential court officials who had supported the former empress were either exiled or killed. Such purges were not bloodier than court struggles in earlier dynasties. Thus, the historians’ severe condemnation of Empress Wu seems overstated and hypocritical. Her rise to power was also facilitated by the emperor’s weak personality and by his recurrent illnesses, including a severe stroke.

From around the mid 660s, the Empress Wu ruled in her husband’s name, yet she still encountered opposition. Thus, she courted support from the Buddhist establishment and from those who opposed the old aristocracy. Deeply religious, if not superstitious, the empress favored the already powerful and affluent Buddhist monasteries, providing funds for the construction of religious buildings and for the fashioning of statues at the Buddhist cave complexes. She attracted scholars by subsidizing projects designed to produce definitive lay as well as Buddhist texts. With such support, she was able to have the first heir apparent who appeared to challenge her position exiled for ­reputedly plotting a coup d’état. Her own fourteen-year-old son, who seemed as weak as his father, was then designated the heir apparent, which strengthened her position, particularly after the death of Gaozong in 683.

Yet Empress Wu continued to face challenges to her authority until she finally assumed power in her own name in 690. Paradoxically, her first threat arose from the son she had selected as the new emperor. She had not counted on his wife, the Empress Wei, and her relatives, who had persuaded the young emperor to appoint members of her own clan to important positions at court, unnerving many of Empress Wu’s allies in the bureaucracy. Within a couple of months, Wu reacted to this challenge by forcing her son to abdicate and enthroning his brother, Emperor Ruizong (662–716). This
putsch
did not end the turbulence, for a coup erupted shortly after the accession that the empress had imposed. Wu not only suppressed this ill-organized and ill-planned coup and killed or imprisoned the hapless plotters but also initiated a ruthless purge of both actual and potential dissidents. Quite a few prominent officials either lost their lives or were exiled during this period of excessive retribution. The only defense for Wu’s actions stems from her fear that Confucian antipathy toward female rulers would jeopardize her position and her conclusion that officials who held such views needed to be rooted out. Indeed, when she was apprised of unjust accusations against loyal officials, she rescinded proceedings against them. Nonetheless, many were illegitimately condemned, particularly when Wu had an affair with a so-called Buddhist monk named Huaiyi (d. 694) and paid less attention to court affairs. She eventually tired of Huaiyi’s highhandedness and had him murdered.

Having been the dominant figure at court for about three decades, it seemed only a matter of time before Wu would assert her own claim to the throne. She had already shifted most court activities from Changan to Luoyang, upon which enormous resources had been lavished. She commissioned a supposedly ancient stone tablet that proclaimed that a “sage” female would rule the world. At the same time, the suspicious discovery of a Buddhist sutra stating that the Maitreya, or Future Buddha, would be incarnated as a woman and that her arrival would usher in a period of great prosperity gave Wu the opportunity to act. In 690, after three ritual refusals, she accepted the throne as “emperor” of a new Zhou dynasty, the name chosen because of its evocation of a golden age in Chinese civilization. One of her first actions was to establish her capital in Luoyang, which was not only easier to defend and supply than Changan but also permitted her freedom from the aristocratic clans who dominated the capital in the west. Her main administrative innovation was increased reliance on the civil-service examinations, rather than dependence on aristocratic privilege, for appointments to office. Yet, despite strong support for a merit system, she herself often circumvented the bureaucracy, relying instead on the “Scholars of the Northern Gate,” a group of her cronies, to help devise and implement court policy. Her patronage of Buddhism also contributed to irregularities in ­administration, as she offered Buddhist monks privileges and positions at court. In effect, Buddhism became the court religion during her reign.

Although the underlying problems of inadequate revenues from land taxes and their evasion by the elite persisted, Empress Wu made only half-hearted efforts to cope with the shortfall; as she aged, her energies were diverted ­elsewhere. Indeed, as her reign and her life drew to a close, she became ever more distant and allowed her favorites to run roughshod over government, as corruption, sale of offices, political abuses, and excessive opulence characterized the court. Reputable officials repeatedly attempted to rid the court of her parasitic and corruptible favorites, but she just as often either saved her cronies or simply did not cooperate in the effort to remove them. Finally, early in 705, a cabal of officials took advantage of her frailty to organize a coup that placed her son Zhongzong (656–710) on the throne as emperor. The Zhou dynasty came to an end, having had, like Wang Mang’s Xin dynasty, only one ruler.

Unsettled conditions did not end with the enthronement of Emperor Zhongzong or his successor. Most of the next decade presented a chaotic ­tableau at court, as the emperor’s relatives and the government’s ministers competed for power. Bizarre intrigues, plots and counterplots, and corruption marred the history of this period of restoration. Shifting the capital back to Changan, Empress Wei, Emperor Zhongzong’s wife, dominated the early stage, expropriated land for herself and her retainers, dealt harshly with any dissent, and may have ­poisoned her husband when he challenged her. Shortly thereafter, a coup led by Princess Taiping (d. 713), Wu’s daughter, resulted in the assassination of Empress Wei and the brief restoration of Emperor Ruizong to the throne.

When Emperor Ruizong proved to be less than totally compliant, Princess Taiping forced him into retirement, and in 712 his son Li Longji (685–762) became emperor. The new emperor came to be known by his posthumous title of Xuanzong and proved to be a much more forceful ruler. Sensing that her power was threatened and that her position could be challenged, Taiping organized a coup to depose Xuanzong, but one of her coconspirators betrayed her. Xuanzong acted first, killing the principal plotters and forcing Taiping herself to commit suicide. The death of Taiping brought to an end the dominant roles of women and female rulers in Tang politics. Many Chinese historians have been vituperative in their denunciations of all these princesses and empresses. Such blanket condemnations do not square with the evidence, certainly not in describing Empress Wu. Despite her excesses and occasional capriciousness, Wu’s reign witnessed impressive accomplishments. The prestige of the civil-service examinations was bolstered, as successful candidates staffed an increasing percentage of the bureaucracy. Wu’s patronage of Buddhism, although it enraged Confucian officials, contributed not only to the development of the religion but also to art and architecture, to trade with Buddhist lands, and to knowledge of the outside world. Yet her drive for power and her circumvention of regular bureaucratic channels in decision making undercut the proper operation of government and laid the foundations for irregularities during the almost decade-long period from the end of her reign until the accession of Xuanzong.

However, Wu’s expansiveness and her lack of hostility toward trade, which also characterized Taizong’s reign, fostered Tang cosmopolitanism. As a result, foreign merchants, who were less likely to be restricted than during most Chinese dynasties, flocked to China both along the caravan trails through central Asia and via the sea routes to China’s southeast ports, areas that had become increasingly prominent after the fall of the Han dynasty. With them came official envoys from other lands; a few – such as the emissary from the Sassanid ruler of Persia, whose domains were threatened by the Islamic armies from Arabia – sought assistance from China, while others merely attempted to curry favor in order to secure the imprimatur of the greatest power in east Asia. Finally, a ­profusion of clerics – Buddhist, Nestorian, Manichean, and Zoroastrian, among others – arrived to establish a beachhead in China. These foreigners began to ­create their own communities within China. Quanzhou and Guangzhou (or Canton), for example, had virtually self-governing foreign settlements of Muslims and scattered groups of Indians and Southeast Asians. Changan, which received ­foreigners mostly from the land routes, had communities of Turks, Uyghurs, and Persians. Naturally, their clothing, music and dance, food, and native products stimulated Chinese interest and yearning for foreign customs and foreign goods.

Indeed, an amazing variety of foreign products and discoveries now entered China. Grapes, though introduced as early as the Han, became more popular, and the Persians and the Turks transmitted knowledge of how to produce grape wine. Pistachios, kohlrabi, spinach, pepper, sugar, nutmeg, saffron, and jasmine were among the foods, aromatics, medicines, and spices brought to China. Foreign dwarfs, musicians, acrobats, and dancers not only entertained at the Tang court but also introduced new fashions in hair and dress. Simultaneously, the Tang introduced tea, a beverage recorded as early as the Qin dynasty, to Korea and Japan and the Chinese introduced paper to central Asia.

Although part of this increased contact with foreign lands came about through trade, cultural interchange, and religion, part was also due to Tang expansionism in the latter half of the seventh century. During the reigns of Gaozong and Empress Wu, China reached the greatest territorial extent in its history. For example, internal disturbances within the state of Koguryo enabled the two Tang rulers to succeed where the Sui emperors had failed. Before challenging Koguryo in 660, Tang forces, with the help of the state of Silla, their principal ally in Korea, had vanquished the southern state of Paekche, which they could then use as a base for forays against Koguryo. In 668, Tang troops overran the weakened kingdom of Koguryo and stationed a force of about twenty thousand men in P’yongyang, its principal city. Within a decade, the Tang withdrew these troops, but they no longer faced a hostile power in the peninsula and even perceived of the Silla kings as vassals. Trade and tribute from Korea increased considerably with the fall of Koguryo. To the west, the Tang continued to capitalize on internal struggles among the western Turks and briefly occupied the very borders of Persia. The court also served as a haven for the son of the last king of Sassanid Persia, whose dynasty the Arabs had vanquished. Such control over the central Asian towns and oases facilitated long-distance trade across Asia.