The Cambridge Illustrated History of China

The pace of change in Chinese society began to increase in the late Tang period. By early Song times (960–1276), advances in agriculture and industry were contributing to dizzying economic growth. The pace of migration south accelerated, and the Yangzi valley finally became as central to the Chinese economy and to Chinese culture as the Yellow River regions in the north. The civil service examination system came to dominate the lives of the elite, and Confucianism was reinvigorated. Despite these signs of vitality, the Song dynasty was never able to establish dominance of East Asia the way the Han and Tang dynasties had. Advances in Inner Asian statecraft meant Song had powerful northern neighbours that had to be treated as equals, not vassals. Limiting the military threat they posed became a major preoccupation of both the state and the intellectual elite. Success was only partial; in 1127 the Song lost most of north China to the Jurchen's state of Jin, thus dividing the Song into two periods, the Northern Song when the capital was at Kaifeng and the Southern Song when the capital was relocated to Hangzhou.

War and peace in a multistate context

During the chaotic century from 860 to 960 following the disintegration of the Tang dynasty, political and military power devolved to the local level. Any strongman able to organize defence against rebels and bandits could become a local warlord and declare himself king, and many of the kings of this period rose from very lowly beginnings; one had even been a merchant's slave.

In the south, no self-proclaimed king ever consolidated much more than the equivalent of a modern province or two, and historians generally refer to the regional states in the south as the ‘Ten Kingdoms’. Political fragmentation in the south did not impair the economy there; on the contrary, rulers of the regional states, eager to expand their tax bases, successfully promoted trade.

The effects of fragmentation were less benign in the north. Many of the regional warlords there were not Chinese but Shatuo Turks from the garrison armies. Both Chang’an and Luoyang had been ravaged by the wars of the late Tang period, and Kaifeng, located in Henan province near the Grand Canal, came to be viewed as the central city in north China.