A History of China (36 page)

An Lushan (703–757), of Sogdian and Turkic heritage, represented the professional military and the military governors whom the court had started to rely on when its institutions began to falter. The decay of the equal-field system, the resulting drop in tax revenues, and the failures of the militia it had counted on compelled the Tang to turn over greater authority to the provincial military governors. Reining in these increasingly powerful military governors, many of whom were of foreign descent, became an almost impossible task. Yang Guozhong repeatedly tried to control An Lushan, accusing the foreign military governor of plotting a coup. Yang’s prophecy was self fulfilling because his consequent hostility ultimately offered An a pretext to challenge the Tang court.

Late in 755, An rebelled, with the expressed intention of removing Yang from power. Shortly thereafter, however, it was clear that he intended to overthrow the emperor as well and to establish his own Yan dynasty. He struck quickly and decisively, moving from his base in Fanyang (in the modern province of Shanxi) south and capturing the secondary Tang capital of Luoyang by the end of the year. Although he encountered stiff resistance, he continued to advance toward Changan. The court responded by summoning its crack troops from the northwest to defend the capital, leaving that region vulnerable to attack by the Tibetans and Turkic groups. Even with this influx of forces, the turmoil, the devastating infighting at court, and the purging and execution of commanders who lost battles harmed the Tang cause. The panicked emperor was persuaded to flee the capital, but the soldiers accompanying him blamed the Yangs for the court’s parlous condition. They trapped and murdered Yang Guozhong and compelled the emperor to execute his previously beloved ­concubine, Yang Guifei. Within a short time, the emperor’s son, with the acquiescence of the hapless emperor, acceded to the throne.

The rebels under An Lushan appeared to have a good chance of winning in the initial stages, but they themselves lacked unity. An was assassinated by his own son, An Qingxu, who was in turn killed by another rebel leader, Shi Siming (703–761), who had been his father’s close friend. Shi met the same fate at the hands of one of his underlings. Such internal struggles weakened the rebels and prevented them from striking a final blow at the Tang. The rebels’ basic defect was that they had no social program; they had no plans to cope with China’s revenue and land problems. They did not reflect the interests of those groups or classes who had not fared well under the Tang. Instead, they were primarily military men led by commanders of generally humble backgrounds who did not share the values of the court bureaucracy and its growing number of scholar-officials. Concerned by the turbulence at court after Li Linfu’s death and wishing to profit from this obvious disarray, they challenged the central authorities. Their rebellion thus did not represent a breakdown or an attempt to deal with the Tang’s socioeconomic dilemmas. Instead these commanders appeared to be principally interested in their own self-­aggrandizement, power, and wealth and had scant concern for reforms that would lead to ­stability.

Yet this inchoate group of leaders posed a threat to the Tang dynasty’s survival. Having little confidence in its own demoralized and inadequate militia, the court had no choice but to seek outside assistance. It first turned to loyal frontier military garrisons and then summoned the Uyghur Turks from Mongolia to crush the rebellion. By 763, this formidable force had overwhelmed the disunited rebels. Yet the Tang’s victory inevitably came with some costs and with diminution of its authority. Civilian officials no longer controlled the military and certainly did not dominate the newly affirmed and bolstered military governors. Without such control, the court was hard pressed to enforce its regulations concerning landholding and taxes. Large estates developed and were increasingly able to evade the payment of taxes. Without sufficient ­revenues, the court was powerless to prevent greater assertions of provincial autonomy. Its relations with bordering foreign states or tribes did not offer a rosier picture. Having provided substantial support during the Tang’s times of trouble, the Uyghurs now sought privileges commensurate with the assistance they had furnished in crushing the rebel forces. Like many of China’s neighbors to the north, they wanted Chinese goods, and their leader, the khaghan, often requested Chinese princesses as brides. With a well-established capital in Karabalghasun, on the Orkhon River, they also differed from their nomadic predecessors in terms of the region they controlled, which stretched from the Altai Mountains in the west to the Kerülen River in the east and included sections of the Gobi desert. As more Uyghurs began to settle down, they attracted Chinese who moved across the borders to join them and offered skills in administration and craftsmanship, among other desirable qualities. Also, as they became increasingly sedentary, some of them turned to farming and others became merchants. Towns grew, and the range of opportunities and occupations broadened considerably. Their government became more elaborate and sophisticated in order to encompass the developing urban ­culture and the growing number of farmers.

The conversion of many Uyghurs to the Persian religion of Manicheism provided still another indication of the changes occurring in their society. A hierarchical religion based on warring forces of light and dark (which were mirrored in spirits and matter), Manicheism perceived of the world as consisting of the elect (the clergy, who exemplified the spiritual life of celibacy and abstention from meat) and auditors (ordinary people, who could marry and eat without restrictions but were to lead modest lives). The ultimate objective was to break away from the material world and to be transported to the land of eternal light. Abstemiousness and a pure life would guarantee admission into this region. Imbedded within Manicheism was a powerful zeal for proselytizing, which received the blessings of the khaghan and his court. The religion’s emphasis on discipline and on a hierarchy appealed to the khaghans, and its relative insignificance in China also attracted them because they wanted to chart an independent course from the sedentary empire to the south. They may, in addition, have been influenced in their choice of religion by the fact that Manicheism put them in touch with west and central Asia via the ­numerous Manichean merchants.

Although the Uyghur Empire bore witness to a transition from a nomadic society to a mixed economy of agriculture, pastoralism, and trade, it encountered many of the same problems of previous steppe societies. Dynastic ­instability, not unlike the rifts that plagued the Xiongnu in the first century
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, undermined the empire. Five of the thirteen khaghans were assassinated, as challengers repeatedly sprang up to depose the rulers and contributed a considerable measure of disorder. Similar rifts bedeviled relations between the pastoral nomads and the growing sedentary population, as their economic and social interests diverged. Leaders of the pastoral contingent, distressed at ­policies that veered away from customary practices, openly defied the khaghans, enfeebling the court and generating widespread conflicts and wars. The khaghans’ army, which was clearly affected by these divisions, became less effec­tive, making it and the whole Uyghur Empire vulnerable to enemies. In 840, it finally fell to the Kyrgyz, another group from the steppes, and those Uyghurs who escaped the destruction managed to flee southwest toward the ­northwestern region of modern China.

Despite the turbulence that afflicted the Uyghurs, they still had leverage in their relations with the Tang. They demanded trade with the Chinese, seeking in particular large quantities of silk in return for horses. The Tang, which needed horses for its cavalry, gained valuable steeds, but the dispatch of substantial amounts of silk to the Uyghurs burdened the Chinese economy. The Tang also found it difficult that the Uyghurs appeared to dictate the terms of their relationship rather than abiding by the Chinese world order, which was a blow to the pretensions of the court. Simultaneously, the khaghans frequently requested Chinese princesses in marriage, requests that often could not be refused. By the late eighth and early ninth centuries, Tang China – which had been an expansionist power and had dominated its relations with most of its neighbors – found itself offering tribute and acquiescing to the Uyghurs’ other demands.

The Tang court repeatedly sought to implement reforms in the late eighth and early ninth centuries to revive its flagging fortunes, although it was realistic in not seeking to implement these policies in clearly autonomous frontier areas. In 780, it initiated a two-tax system designed to rationalize taxes, which had grown into a confused, jumbled, and often-evaded multi-tax structure. This reform did indeed create a more equitable and less cumbersome means of raising revenues, but demanded an ability to collect these taxes. Undermining the Tang’s efforts to do so was its reliance on the powerful regional governors to carry out these policies. These local rulers did not buckle to central-government authority and devised their own taxes. On several occasions, the court attempted to impose its will on certain provinces, but its tests of will with provincial governors bore little fruit, and the mobilization of military forces placed even greater stress on its finances.

Throughout the ninth century, the court’s authority continued to erode. Its efforts to exert influence on provincial governors and administrations faltered, enabling the local landlord elites to amass great wealth and power. Landlords, capitalizing on the inequitable tax burden imposed upon the peasantry, on their own ability to evade taxes, and on the support of corrupt officials, had garnered more and more land. Peasants responded to these unsettled conditions with banditry, brigandage, and smuggling. The northeast, where An Lushan’s rebellion had originated, witnessed among the highest incidences of such lawlessness, but violent disruptions spread to the south during the course of the ninth century. Both the central and provincial armies had been starved of funds by avaricious or cost-cutting governors and by the limited tax revenues available to the court, which itself was plagued by internal rivalries, by aggrandizement of power by eunuchs, and by demoralized and occasionally corrupt officials. In some areas, rebellions were joined or instigated by soldiers who were appalled by official corruption, by the deteriorating living standards of the peasantry, or by grievances concerning their own impressments into military service, or simply inspired by a desire for booty. In 878, the court was compelled to seek the help of the Shato Turks, who had already assisted the Tang in its efforts to crush the An Lushan outbreak. Based in the province of Shanxi, the Shato were to play an increasingly significant role in the late ninth and tenth centuries.

The court had changed considerably after the An Lushan rebellion, with an inner court gradually surpassing the power of the bureaucracy. Eunuchs assumed prominent positions in government, often frustrating the reform efforts of competent officials. A coup in 805, seemingly directed in part against the eunuchs, was abortive. One emperor, who reigned from 805 to 820, attempted to stem the erosion of the central government’s authority and to arrest the illegal abuses and excesses of provincial governors. He also tried to curb the eunuchs, but his efforts did little to prevent them from amassing additional power. Later plots and attempts by such officials as Li Deyu (787–850) to subvert the eunuchs’ authority were also doomed to fail.

The court’s domestic dilemmas were mirrored by retreats in its foreign relations. It continued to withdraw from the Tarim River basin oases ­occupied by Tang armies in the seventh century. Tibetan forces had started to dislodge Chinese forces from these towns and oases almost immediately after the An Lushan debacle. By 763, the Tang had been forced to abandon most of its positions in central Asia, and from that year on “what little news of the West that reached China had to pass through the hostile territory of the Tibetans.”
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In 766, Tibetan armies moved into the important oases of Ganzhou and Suzhou, and in 781 they occupied Hami, one of the critical gateways to central Asia. Although the Tang dynastic history reveals that the population of Hami amounted to about ten thousand, the town’s significance belies this puny figure. Hami was strategically located along the major trade routes to the west. Thus, the loss of Hami and neighboring oases and towns undermined the court’s attempts to dictate commercial and tributary arrangements with the regions and states to the west and resulted in a disruption of the Silk Roads trade.

Tibet’s expansion at the expense of China continued throughout much of the dynasty. The two powers signed treaties in 783 and 787, but disputes, which often erupted into battles, persisted. Adding to the turmoil was the involvement of the Uyghurs, who sought to capitalize on the confusion and on the Tang’s evident weakness. Uyghur forces extracted sizable payments from caravans traversing their lands, as well as repeatedly demanding benefits and concessions from the Tang. Nonetheless, the prominent official Li Mi (722–789) persuaded the court to satisfy some of the Uyghur demands in order to have a credible ally against the Tibetans. He even conceived of an audacious plan to forge alliances against the Tibetans with the ‘Abbasid Caliphate, which had its capital in Baghdad; the Nanzhao kingdom, which had its capital in Dali (in the modern Chinese province of Yunnan); and India. The extent of this plan is an indication of the truly breathtaking international relations of this era. After some initial hesitation, Emperor Dezong (742–805) followed Li’s advice, sending one of his daughters in marriage to the Uyghur khaghan and establishing markets where the Uyghurs could trade their horses for Chinese silk. The idea of an alliance with India was extremely far fetched, but otherwise Li Mi’s grand plan appeared to have been, in part, implemented. In 794, disaffected by Tibetan tax and military demands, the Nanzhao kingdom permanently defected from its previous vassal-like status to the Tibetans to cooperate instead with the Tang. The Uyghur Khaghanate cooperated with the Tang until 840, when the Kyrgyz defeated it, compelling the Uyghurs to migrate westward. Finally, in the early ninth century, Tibetans and Arabs became bitterly embroiled in struggles over control of western central Asia. Tibet was isolated, yet the ninth-century Tang court could not recover most of the oases that lay along the foothills of the Tianshan mountains. Instead the Tang and Tibetan rulers, who recognized that they needed to defuse tensions with at least one of their manifold hostile neighbors, finally came to an accommodation after decades of intermittent warfare. In 822 or 823, they signed a peace treaty that prohibited incursions by either side on the other’s territory. The Tang thus achieved peace for about twenty years while the Tibetans could focus on their determined and implacable enemies, the Uyghurs, with whom they contested control over the central Asian oases and the resulting caravan trade to the west.