Untitled Essay, Research Paper

The Song dynasty lasted over 300 years, from 960 to 1279. Their history is

divided into two periods of Northern and Southern Song. The Song period was

one of China’s most peaceful and prosperous era. However the Song government

was corrupt and weak.

The Song Dynasty, or Sung Dynasty was a period in which the Chinese government

was very weak. In the beginning General Chao K’uang-yin, also known as Sung

T’ai Tsu, was forced to become emperor in order to unify China. Sung T’ai

Tsu created a national army under his direct control. He, and only he had

control of the military. Once he had passed away his less competent successors

were unable to keep the military under control, the military increasingly

lost prestige. The weakening of China’s military, coincided with the rise

of strong nomadic nations on the boarders.

During the same time of the military’s loss of prestige, the civil service

rose in dignity. This was an examination system that had been restored in

Sui and T’ang and was further elaborated and regularized. Selection examinations

were help every three years at the district, provincial, and metropolitan

levels.

Only 200 out of thousands of applicants were granted the jinshi degree. This

was the highest degree and appointed on government posts. From this time

on, civil servants became China’s most envied elite, replacing the hereditary

nobles and landlords.

The Song dynasty only extended over to the parts of earlier Chinese empires.

The Khitans controlled the northeastern territories and the His Hsia controlled

the northwestern territories. The Song emperors were unable to recover these

lands so they were forced to make peace with the Khitans and the Hsi Hsia.

They gave massive amounts of payments to the barbarians, under these peace

terms, it depleted the state treasury and cause heavy payments on taxpaying

peasants.

About 100 years after the Songs first started ruling over China, their government

started to go through a major decline. Officials that held important government

positions were corrupt. Wealthy merchants that became rich from foreign trade

found ways to avoid paying taxes. The peasants began to rebel when the heavy

taxes were placed on them.

The Song Dynasty had a lot of problems, in 1069 Emperor Shen Tsung appointed

Wang An-shi as chief minister. Wang was a scholar who studied earlier Chinese

governments. Wang noticed the corrupt government and made huge reform in

the government. His reforms were based on the text of ‘Rites of Chou’. Wang

tried to get honest, intelligent officials by improving the university system.

He made civil examinations more practical and reformed the merit system to

reduce corruption among government officials.

Wang help the governments financial problems by establishing a graduated

income tax. This meant the wealthy people were required to pay a greater

percentage of their income that poorer people pay. This new tax method reduced

the burden on the peasants and increased the governments revenues. The extra

money created from the taxing was used to pay government workers, which abolished

forced labor.

Many of his new laws were revivals of earlier policies, many officials and

landlords opposed his reforms. So when the emperor and Wang died, which happen

to been within a year of each other the laws were withdrawn. For the next

several decades, until the fall of Northern Song in 1126, the reformers and

anti-reformers took turns in power, this in turn created havoc and turmoil

in the government.

The Song tried to regain the territory that they had lost to the Khitans

by becoming allies with a new powerful Juchens from Manchuria. Once the Juchens

defeated the Khitans, they turned on the Song and occupied the capital of

Kaifeng. The Juchens established the Chin dynasty. They took the emperor

and his son prisoner, along with 3,000 others, and ordered them to be held

in Manchuria.

With the emperor and his son prisoners, another son fled south and settles

in 1127 at Hangzhou. He resumed the Song rule as the emperor Kao Tsung. The

Song retained control south of the Huai River, where they ruled for another

one and half centuries.

While the Song upper class, which included the nobles and imperial courts

indulged themselves in art and luxurious living in the urban center, the

latest nomad empire arose in the north. The formidable Mongol armies, conquerors

of Eurasia as far west as easter Europe and of Korea in the east, descended

on Southern Song. This was the end of the Song dynasty, which ended by the

start of the Mongol dynasty.

The weakness of the Song dynasty brought its downfall. Its neighboring barbarians

were becoming stronger while the Song was becoming weaker. The Song dynasty

had a few holes in it that lead to its weakness and corruption. Even though

the Song era was one of China’s most peaceful and prosperous periods, it

could have lasted even longer if it had a stronger government.

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