Denis Twitchett

The Cambridge Encyclopedia of China.

The Cambridge Encyclopedia of China provides an absorbing and authoritative account of China and all things Chinese - geography, politics, customs, food and drink, the arts, and a rich and colourful history, from ancient times through to the momentous events of the past decade. Brian Hook and his team of expert contributors have thoroughly revised and updated the Encyclopedia to take full account of the most recent developments in China, from the economic reforms and increased freedoms of the early 1980s to the crisis of 1989 and its aftermath. The book is thus a uniquely broad-ranging account of China for everyone with an interest in the area, which will appeal both as a highly attractive illustrated reference book and as an invaluable source of practical information on a developing superpower.

Confucian learning in late Ming thought

From 1604 to 1626 was the period dominated by the Tung-lin Academy movement, from its formal founding to its destruction. Its leaders and associates, numbering in the hundreds, sought to reintegrate Wang Yang-mings teachings with the imperially sanctioned version of Neo-Confucianism and to reject decades of misinterpretations of Wangs message at a time when the government was beset by problems. Literati of various persuasions sought to identify ideas which would somehow promote order when they were initiated by the emperor, but none succeeded in time. This chapter explores the development in the late Ming of internal tensions within the main strand of Confucian thinking. Within this strand, there was a proliferation of views as well as attempts to reintegrate a literati ethos that some contemporaries held was a disintegrating one. At the end of the Ming period, the Learning of the Way originally systematized by Chu Hsi remained the officially sanctioned doctrine for the purposes of education and examinations.

Han foreign relations

As Tsou Yens theory increasingly gained currency, Chinas self-image of its geographical situation underwent a fundamental change. The Han Chinese world order not only existed as an idea, but, more important, also expressed itself in an institutional form. The Han world order was defined mainly in terms of the so-called five-zone or wu-fu theory. The five-zone theory played an important historical role in the development of foreign relations during the Han period. Central to the institutional expressions of the Han understanding of world order is the development of the famous tributary system. The first great challenge faced by Han statesmen in their shaping of a foreign policy emanated from the steppe-based empire to the north, that of the Hsiung-nu. On the financial and material side, Hu-han-yeh was rewarded for his participation in the tributary system. The financial part of the tributary system proved to be particularly attractive to the Hsiung-nu.

Ming China and the emerging world economy, c. 1470–1650

INTRODUCTION During the Sung (A.D. 960–1279) and early Yuan (1279–c. 1320) dynasties, Chinas agricultural and industrial production, its domestic commerce, and its economic contacts with the “outside world” all expanded dramatically, reaching levels that far surpassed anything known in earlier periods of Chinese history. In recent years, William H. McNeill, Janet L. Abu-Lughod, and F.W. Mote have been among those who have argued that these developments not only had a profound effect on Chinese civilization, but on that of much of the rest of Eurasia. As Professor McNeill has put it, “New wealth arising among a hundred million Chinese began to flow out across the seas [and significantly along caravan routes as well] and added new vigor and scope to market-related activity. Scores, hundreds, and perhaps thousands of vessels began to sail from port to port within the Sea of Japan and the South China Sea, the Indonesian Archipelago and the Indian Ocean. Most voyages were probably relatively short, and goods were reassorted at many different entrepots along the way from original producer to ultimate consumer … [A]n increasing flow of commodities meant a great number of persons moving to and fro on shipboard or sitting in bazaars, chaffering over prices.” By the time Marco Polo began his seventeen-year stay in China during the mid-1270s, this “increasing flow of commodities” meant that substantial quantities of Chinese raw silk, silk textiles, porcelains, and other goods were being carried by ship and caravan to other parts of Asia, to East Africa, and the Middle East, to the Mediterranean trading area, and even to the major markets of northwestern Europe.

The Ming fiscal administration

INTRODUCTION Many characteristic features of Ming fiscal administration trace their origins to the first Ming emperors peculiar concept of government. In 1380, the office of the prime minister was abolished, never to be revived. Henceforth, the emperor acted as his own chief executive officer. After a series of bloody purges that lasted from 1376 to 1396, the bureaucracy was virtually reduced to a huge clerical pool, subservient to the sovereign but not empowered to make important decisions. The new system that the first emperor had created called for an omnipresent ruler who exercised personal control over a population officially reported at close to sixty million. The civil government functioned as not much more than a transmitter of imperial wishes. The situation at the local level was the reverse of the situation at the top of the administrative hierarchy. Villages were organized into self-governing communities. The basis for these group associations was not civil law, but Confucian morality. With intra-community litigations settled by imperial adjudication and unruly persons punished by their own elders, local communities needed little official supervision. In fact, the first Ming emperor even refused to allow his governmental functionaries to enter rural areas. This organizational scheme reveals a curious amalgam of arbitrary, autocratic rules and idealistic notions. Such an administrative system was basically unsound. The success of its operation relied more on the ideological cohesion and administrative discipline that bound the governing as well as the governed than on official administrative procedures. The first Ming emperor, in fact, ran his administration by cowing his subjects with brutal and arbitrary punishments on the one hand and moral exhortations on the other.

The foreign presence in China

The foreign establishment in early republican China had many facets: territory, people, rights established by treaty or unilaterally asserted, armed force, diplomacy, religion, commerce, journalism, freebooting adventure, racial attitudes. This chapter describes briefly the dimensions of each of the principal guises in which the foreigner impinged upon the polity, economy, society and mind of China. In the absence of modern financial institutions in China, the early foreign merchant houses undertook to provide for themselves many of the auxiliary services such as banking, foreign exchange and insurance essential to their import-export businesses. However, by the second decade of the twentieth century, 12 foreign banks were operating in China. In the first two decades of the twentieth century, 85 to 90 per cent of Chinas foreign trade by value was carried in foreign flag vessels. The foreign presence was highly visible in three departments of the central government: the Maritime Customs Service, the Post Office and the Salt Administration.

Philosophy and religion from Han to Sui

The collapse of the Han dynasty during the second and third centuries AD together with the political, social, and economic troubles that it brought about, resulted in a period of intellectual ferment unequaied in Chinese history except at the end of the Chou period, the end of the Ming dynasty and the revolutions of the twentieth century. Toward the end of the second century BC, Chuang-tzu was well known among a group of literary men gathered at his court by the king of Huai-nan. In the midst of the upheavals of the end of the Han dynasty, the long-concealed layer of popular Taoism rose to the surface in a series of rebellions that broke out in 184. In the midst of this Taoist explosion Buddhism was introduced to China. Real philosophical exegesis of the Chuang-tzu started only with Hsiang Hsiu and Kuo Hsiang, the greatest thinkers of the generation after Ho Yen and Wang Pi.

The Chien-wen, Yung-lo, Hung-hsi, and Hsüan-te reigns, 1399–1435

INTRODUCTION The period from 1399 to 1436 spans the reigns of four descendants of the founding emperor. The short Chien-wen reign (1399–1402) which was ended precipitously by usurpation, preceded the Yung-lo reign (1403–25), an era of imperial consolidation and expansion; the Hung-hsi reign (1425– 26), which lasted only nine months, was followed by a period of stability and retrenchment during the Hsuan-te reign (1426–36). There were, then, two short interludes separating the three major reigns of the early Ming. Despite the disorder brought about by the civil war of 1399–1402, there are more continuities with the past than discontinuities in the political, social, economic, intellectual, and cultural developments that occurred during these thirty-seven years. That is to say, institutional arrangements and policies under these four Ming emperors were largely shaped by the vision of the dynastic founder and by the policies he set in motion to realize it. Changes in earlier policies and systems did occur, particularly during the reign of the Yung-lo emperor; but under his successors certain of these were curtailed or abandoned, and what further changes did occur were for the most part moderate adjustments carried out within the framework of established institutions and traditions. This style of government established a tradition of conservatism at court early in the dynasty; at the same time it fostered dynastic stability and preserved intact both the lands and the spirit bequeathed by the founder of the dynasty. The transfer of the imperial capital from Nanking to Peking under the Yung-lo emperor remains the most significant institutional change of this period. Although the Hung-hsi emperor attempted to return the court to Nanking, Peking became the imperial capital once again in the following reign, and it remained thereafter the capital of the Ming empire. Another major change occurred in the office of the grand secretaries: to fill the gap that existed between the throne and the imperial bureaucracy – a gap created when the founding emperor did away with the secretariat in 1380 – the grand secretaries began to advise the throne on matters of policy.

The Nationalist Revolution: from Canton to Nanking, 1923–28

The Nationalist Revolution of the 1920s succeeded because of a remarkable mobilization of human energy and material resources in the service of patriotic and revolutionary goals. This chapter discusses the rejuvenating the Kuomintang, creation of a revolutionary military force, conflict in the Kwangtung base, and the Russian financing of Chinese revolutionary activities. The patriotic purposes of the Northern Expedition was to liberate China from the warlords and win its rightful place of equality among the nations, with friendship for all. The disastrous Canton uprising, engineered by a small group of daring Chinese communist leaders to carry out general instructions of the new Provisional Politburo in Shanghai, marked a low point in the Communist Partys long struggle for power. Now the country had five main agglomerations of regional military power: the group proclaiming itself the Nationalist government, the Kwangsi faction, Feng Yii-hsiangs Kuominchiin, Yen Hsi-shan of Shansi, and Chang Hsuehliang and other Manchurian generals controlling domestic affairs in the North-east.

The Move to the South and the Reign of Kao-tsung (1127–1162)

Chao Kou (1107–87), known by his posthumous temple name as Kao-tsung (r. 1127–62), was the ninth son of Emperor Hui-tsung (r. 1100–26) and a younger brother of Emperor Ch’in-tsung (r. 1126–7). Kao-tsung was the emperor who led the restoration of the Sung dynasty and inaugurated what is known as the Southern Sung dynasty (1127–1279). Resisting the Chin dynasty’s attempts at further conquest, the Southern Sung dynasty lasted more than one hundred and fifty years and enjoyed decades of economic and cultural prosperity. In traditional Chinese historiography the Southern Sung is considered a weak dynasty, humiliated as a vassal state by the Chin (Jurchen) dynasty (1115–1234). Kao-tsung is criticized for being a weak ruler unable to avenge Sung’s humiliation at the hands of Chin and unable to recover the Sung’s former northern territory. Kao-tsung is also criticized because he and his vilified chief councilor, Ch’in Kuei (1090–1155), were responsible for the death of general Yueh Fei (1103–41), who, because of his efforts in resisting Chin, came to be regarded as a “national hero.” Despite these criticisms, Kao-tsung is perhaps better to be remembered as the young emperor who reigned through a period of disastrous military defeats and near-terminal political crises as the Sung dynasty faced oblivion, and yet later oversaw two decades of resistance, stability, and recovery.