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 trading rights in return. The system gave China prestige and a flow of foreign goods, and it gave smaller states a measure of security and access to Chinese markets.

Confucianism, Neo-Confucianism and Buddhism

Confucian ideas, drawn from the teachings of Confucius (born in the sixth century BCE), set out a society held together by hierarchical relationships: ruler and subject, father and son, husband and wife, elder and younger brother, friend and friend. Each side owed duties to the other, with deference owed upward and benevolence downward. Filial piety, the respect and obedience a child owes to parents and ancestors, was the model for these relationships and for loyalty to the state.

Neo-Confucianism developed during the Song, with Zhu Xi (1130–1200) as its best-known thinker. It kept Confucian ethics and added a more developed account of the universe and human nature, drawing on Buddhist and Daoist ideas about the self and the cosmos while criticizing Buddhism as otherworldly. It stressed self-cultivation and study of the classics, and its reading of the classics became the basis of the civil service curriculum, which spread it through the educated class. Neo-Confucian thinking also reinforced the subordination of women, and the practice of foot binding spread among elite families during the Song.

Buddhism had entered China from India centuries earlier and remained influential. The main branches are worth distinguishing:

In China Buddhism lost some of its position after a period of state suppression in the ninth century, but it kept a wide popular following, and monasteries remained significant landowners and centers of learning. Buddhist thought also shaped Neo-Confucianism, so the two traditions were intertwined rather than simply opposed.

The Song economy

Song China was one of the most productive economies in the world. Several developments explain this:

• Champa rice, brought from the kingdom of Champa in what is now Vietnam, ripened early and tolerated poor water supply, so farmers could plant it on more land and in some areas harvest two crops a year. Larger harvests supported a growing population, and the population of China rose substantially.
• The Grand Canal, first built in earlier dynasties and expanded and kept up under the Song, linked the rice-growing south with the political centers of the north and cheapened bulk transport.
• Iron and steel production grew, helped by coal and coke as fuel in the north, and supplied tools, weapons and coinage.
• Textiles, especially silk, and porcelain were made in large workshops for sale at home and abroad, and they were among the main goods that Chinese merchants sent along maritime routes to Southeast Asia, India and the Islamic world.
• Paper money appeared in the Song because copper coins were too heavy to carry in large quantities, and the state issued notes. Woodblock printing and, later, movable type spread books, and the compass and improved ship design aided navigation.

The economy became increasingly commercialized, with cities such as Kaifeng and Hangzhou growing very large, markets operating through the day and merchants playing a bigger part in public life. Even so, most labor was still done by free peasants and artisans rather than enslaved workers, and Confucian ideology continued to rank merchants below farmers and scholars, because they were thought to profit from others' work.

Japan and Korea

Neighboring societies borrowed from China selectively. In Japan, the Heian period (794–1185) saw the court adopt Chinese writing, Buddhism and Confucian ideas and then develop its own forms. The written syllabary known as kana made it possible to write the Japanese language directly, and court women produced major works of prose, among them The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu, written around the year 1000. Real political power then moved from the court to regional warriors. After 1185 the Kamakura shogunate, headed by a military ruler (the shogun), governed in the emperor's name, and samurai warriors held land in return for loyalty to a lord, a system with strong similarities to European feudalism. Kamakura Japan defeated attempted Mongol invasions in 1274 and 1281, helped by storms.

Korea, unified under the Silla kingdom in the seventh century and ruled by the Goryeo dynasty from 918 to 1392, adopted Chinese institutions including the examination system and Confucian teaching while remaining a strongly Buddhist society for much of this time. Goryeo craftsmen made fine celadon pottery and printed books with metal movable type in the thirteenth century. Korea, like Vietnam, paid tribute to Chinese dynasties while keeping its own rulers and language.

The Chinese cultural tradition (literature, scholarship, Confucian values and Buddhism) therefore spread across East Asia, and each region adapted it to its own conditions.