So today we're going to be starting on the second half of this course on modern China. But we have to start by talking about what do we mean by "modern China" and why in particular do we call this period of the Song, Liao, Jin, Yuan from 960 to 1368 AD or CE, why should we call that "modern China"? The second part of "modern China" will be 1850 to 2015, so we have no difficulty understanding why that should be called "modern China". So let's look just to begin with at the basic circumstances of the Song dynasty, which is the longest-living dynasty in this period, and try to understand in a very shorthand style what exactly we mean by "modern China". But first, some basic political facts. As you just saw, we're talking about four dynasties: the Song, the Liao, the Jin, and the Yuan or the Mongol dynasty. And I'm going to be relying here on an account in Peter K. Bol's <i>Neo-Confucianism in History</i> that introduces both the political facts and certain basic economic changes and above all the shift in the center of gravity, both economic and demographic, the shift of gravity from North China to South China. So first, some basic political facts. The Khitan Liao state already in the year 970 —so only 10 years after the founding of the Song dynasty— occupied the northeast region between the Song dynasty and Koryo, which is modern Korea. Failure to take back the region of the northeast around Beijing—in modern Beijing in particular— led to a treaty in the year 1004 between the Liao and the Song, according to which the Song had to pay to Liao annual compensation of 200,000 bolts of silk and 100,000 ounces of silver. A huge amount of money! On the other side, in the northwest of the Song, the Song had no control over the Silk Road. The Tanguts, another non-Han group, created the dynasty of Xixia 西夏 in the year period 1038 to 1044, and the Song agreed on an annual payment of half that of the Liao. So, this Northern Song dynasty, as we call it, from 960 to 1126 is in fact in a relationship of inferiority with respect to two non-Han, non-Chinese dynasties —the Liao in the northeast, the Xixia in the northwest. In addition to that, Vietnam had become independent since the year 939. So even before the founding of the Song, the southwest of what is today China, Yunnan, Guizhou was also still independent—the independent kingdom of Dali. Or perhaps even more important than these geographical aspects, geopolitical aspects, is the fact that the Liao ruler was also "Son of Heaven", so there were two Sons of Heaven, which is unimaginable, unthinkable prior to this period in Chinese history. The defense budget was 80% of cash revenues in 1065, in the middle of the Northern Song. In 1115, Jurchen tribes, once subject to the Liao dynasty, created the Jin dynasty, which lasted until 1234, when it was conquered by the Mongol Yuan dynasty. Economic change in this period. Already in the year 780, there was a biennial tax called <i>liangshui</i> 兩稅—two times a year— that recognized private ownership and based it not on the head of the family unit but of the family unit itself —based on <i>hu</i> 戶 property—so on a larger, on a group of people if you will. This allowed for accumulation of land. By the 11th century, 95% of land was in private hands. We start to look at the difference between, well here it's not North and South, but the new kind of cities that emerged. Chang'an, the capital of the Tang dynasty, was still a grid city—a city laid out like modern-day New York. That is to say chopped up into squares with its own walls around it and basically an administrative center. Elite families in the Chang'an Tang period had wealth in land and bolts of silk, and the government gave them estates in return for their government service. Kaifeng, by contrast, the capital of the Northern Song, was an open city. It was a commercial city, at the head of the Grand Canal that we'll be talking about again in a moment, and urban development was not in the hands of the government but of private hands. It had a population of some 1 million, but it was no longer the only city as in the time of Chang'an. There were other great cities, Yangzhou, Suzhou, Hangzhou, basically in central China, Yangzi Delta, and of course Hangzhou south and clearly in the south of China. By 1050, taxing commerce instead of controlling it had become the government policy. And by the year 1077, commercial taxes were the main source of government revenue. There is a concurrent rise of market towns. By 1084, 1837 market towns scattered all across Chinese territory, Song territory, and particularly in the south. In the 11th-century, convertible bills of exchange were widely used in private commerce. In the 1160s, now in the Southern Song, the government issued well-backed paper money with great success. Commercial tax revenues show 33 county seats and market towns had tax revenues that were higher than their prefectural seats. In other words, the next high, the next on the scale of hierarchy, administrative hierarchy, the next up on the scale, the prefectural seats, were paying less tax than the county seats and even the market towns, below the county seats, which means that economic and administrative networks had become distinct. This goes together with population change. In the year 752, right in the middle of the Tang dynasty, just under half of the registered households of around 4 million lived in the South and in Sichuan, while 4.86 million lived in the North. By the year 1085, in the middle of the Northern Song, there were 5.66 million in the North, 10.94 million in the South and in Sichuan. In 742, back in the Tang dynasty, the middle and lower Yangzi River area plus the Southeast coast constituted a mere 27% of population. By the mid-11th, this was 50%. And an early Ming census shows that the North lost 30% of its population from the year 1100, so a massive demographic shift from North to South China. From 750 to 1050, so the mid-Tang to the mid-Northern Song, China's population doubles. The capital of the Southern Song in the period from 1170 to 1270, near the end of the dynasty, the population went from 100,000 to 190,000 <i>hu</i>, so almost a doubling in 100 years. Nanjing had 170,000 family units; Quanzhou in Fujian, a major international port, 50,000; Chengdu in Sichuan and Ezhou in Hubei, 100,000 family units; Suzhou, which is on Lake Taihu and considered to be part of the southern part of China, in the year 740, had but 80,000 <i>hu</i>, or family units. And at the start of the 11th, it was even smaller than that. But by 1080, it was up to 200,000 <i>hu</i>; 1275, 330,000; and by 1369—that is to say the founding of the Ming dynasty—475,000 <i>hu</i> family units. So the massive growth of the southern population and particularly of some major cities. So we can see that this shift from North to South China is key to the understanding of the whole period. And let's give some more statistics and some more aspects of this shift. In the middle of the Tang, in 748, the South annually shipped 2.5 million <i>dan</i> 石 —a <i>dan</i> is equivalent of 60 kg, so 2.5 × 60 kg— along the Grand Canal as rice tax. By the year 1007, right at the very beginning of the Northern Song, this was up to 6.2 million—almost 3 times as much. Tea, which is primarily a southern product, was planted in 52 counties in 742. By the time of the founding of the Northern Song, in 960, this was up to 80 counties, and by the end of the Northern Song, in 1126, 277 counties. So this tea, this cash crop, is in fact also an indication of the commercialization of the economy, the commercialization of agriculture. Water conservancy projects soared in the South, with 3.5 million <i>mou</i> 畝 of new land just around Lake Taihu, the area where Suzhou and Wuxi were located. Transport in the North from Chang'an, the capital of the Tang, to the borders was all by road. In the South, it was by river—far cheaper mode of transport. The North was all about frontier defense, against the non-Chinese groups that we've just talked about. The South, far away from that border, was all about economic development and international trade. The mariner's compass was invented in the 11th century and this freed ships from hugging the coast. As a result, Song pottery is found throughout Southeast Asia. There were ships anchoring in Canton from over 40 different places, also in Quanzhou in Fujian. In nine Zhejiang coastal counties alone, there were 19,287 registered vessels. So this gives you some idea of the development of international commerce, especially in the Southern Song dynasty. And of course this went with a shift also in who became government officials. By the 1070s, right in the middle of the Northern Song, officials from the South dominated policymaking offices. And this then leads us to a final feature that is absolutely fundamental to understanding the difference between what we could call an aristocratic society in the Tang and a far more meritocratic society in the Song: the examination system. After the mid-Tang, 755, examinations supplied at most 15% of civil officials. How are the other ones named? Well, partly by what we now call <i>guanxi</i> 關係. That is to say by recommendation, by people who, partly also by heredity. By 1050, about half of the 12,700 officials in the civil service had passed the examinations. Entry-level, prefectural, and capital exams were all blind. That is not by recommendation or <i>guanxi</i>. Schools were built. By the end of the Northern Song, there were 167,662 registered students in state schools supported by rents from 1.5 million acres of land with annual expenses of 3 million strings of cash. So you can see a huge investment of the state, of society in education and the exam system. The southern provinces of Fujian, Zhejiang, Jiangxi, and Hunan, 80 to 100% of the counties in these four provinces had schools. In the North, this figure was 10 to 25%. There were an addition 350 private schools, most of them founded after 1126. That is to say during the Southern Song. Throughout the Southern Song, there were triennial exams, every third year. And by 1250, near the end of the Southern Song, there were up to 400,000 candidates seeking to pass exams. So the rise of the examination system as the primary mode of access to officialdom and the shift of that—not just demography and economics but also political power via the examination system and of course this accelerated under the Southern Song— explains the huge differences between medieval China, the Tang, and "modern" China: modern China, starting with the Song.
