AP World History: Modern

## Governing China: the Song dynasty The Song dynasty (960–1279) ruled China for most of the period before the Mongol conquest. It was divided into the Northern Song, whose capital was Kaifeng, and the Southern Song, which began in 1127 when northern China fell to the Jurchen (the Jin dynasty) and the court moved south to Hangzhou. Song rulers were militarily weaker than the Tang had been, and they bought peace with neighbors on the steppe by paying them silver and silk each year, but they built the most developed bureaucracy in the world at that time. The bureaucracy was staffed through the **civil service examination**, which tested knowledge of the Confucian classics. Because anyone who could afford to study could in principle sit it, the exams created a scholar-official class (often called the scholar-gentry) whose standing came from learning and office rather than from birth alone. In practice only families with the money and leisure to prepare a son for years could compete, so the system rewarded wealth as well as talent. It tied the educated elite to the state and to Confucian ideas, which gave the dynasty a way of justifying its rule: an emperor who governed with virtuous, educated officials claimed to rule in accordance with the Mandate of Heaven. China's relations with its neighbors followed the **tribute system**. States such as Korea and Vietnam sent envoys to the Chinese court, performed rituals acknowledging the emperor's superiority and received gifts and…