Yu Yingshi: The basic driving force of political integration in Chinese history

Author| Yu Yingshi (1930-2021)

He is a historian and sinologist, an academician of academia Sinica, and a fellow of the American Philosophical Society

When discussing the issue of division and integration in Chinese history, we are most likely to think of the sentence at the beginning of the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms": "The general trend of the world will be divided for a long time." But this is a political divide and a combination, a representation rather than a substance. Behind the political division, there are often cultural, economic and social forces at work. For example, the political unification of the Qin and Han Dynasties matured after five or six hundred years of brewing in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. If the Zizhi Tongjian prevails, the unification of the Qin and Han Dynasties also has a historical background of at least two hundred years. I believe that this is precisely the intention of Sima Guang's writing of the history of the three branches of the Jin Dynasty. He wrote a general history of politics, and the focus was naturally on the two unified dynasties of the Han and Tang Dynasties, thinking that this dynasty was a lesson. But his book began to split, and finally split (five generations), which is very thought-provoking.

The transition from unification to long-term division of the Eastern Han Dynasty also had extremely complex factors. The first is that the Xiongnu and Qiang people continue to migrate internally, forming a great power in the northern and northwestern frontiers. Among them, the population of the Qiang ethnic group has increased particularly rapidly, and some of them have penetrated deep into the Sanfu area near Chang'an. By the middle of the second century, the conflict between Liangzhou Qianghu and Han had intensified, and the imperial court could no longer effectively control the northwestern border counties. Therefore, whenever there was chaos, some people in the Han Court suggested abandoning Liangzhou. In fact, the influence of Qianghu culture in Liangzhou has shown signs of surpassing Han culture. For example, the book "Filial Piety" in the Liangzhou area at the end of the Han Dynasty has not been well circulated, although the Han people (including women) also practiced martial arts. Dong Zhuo is a typical example of the Han People's Qianghuization; it is a symbolic event that he was summoned to lead Liangzhou soldiers to the central government to participate in the government. Later, the "Five Hu Chaos" and the Central Plains fell apart, and its signs were already seen here.

The second is the rise of the clan, and the scholar's desire to protect the family is far more important than loyalty to the imperial court. Throughout the Wei and Jin Dynasties, the Mendi aristocracy was an important splittist force. The third is that ideologically, the confucian consciousness of heavy groups began to decline, and it was replaced by Lao Zhuang, who emphasized individual freedom. The spread of Buddhism to the East and its spread has also contributed to this trend. In the Jin Dynasty, the theory of "Shamen does not worship the king" was most appreciated by famous scholars, which further weakened the authority of politics. In the era of the separation of the north and the south, southern Buddhism was combined with metaphysical qing talk, so the emphasis was on "righteous interpretation". This custom is in line with the way of life of the mendi ("The New Language of the World"). But it is clearly not conducive to governance. Although Hui Yuan flaunted that Buddhism could be "customary", this "custom" mainly refers to the order of Mendi society. Northern Buddhism is characterized by the "seeking blessings", and its ultimate purpose is also to pursue family and personal liberation.

The fourth is the open rebellion of folk culture against the Confucian culture of the upper echelons. From the Taiping Dao of the Yellow Turban, the Wudou Rice Dao of Zhangjiao, to the Tianshi Dao of Sun En and Lu Xun, this development is represented.

The four centrifugal forces cited above have a long history, from the Eastern Han Dynasty to the Sui and early Tang Dynasties. If we want to understand why China has been politically divided for four centuries under the Eastern Han Dynasty, we cannot but look at the evolution of these forces. (In addition, there are other centrifugal forces, such as the competition between localism, which is also extremely important.) At the end of the Han Dynasty, the "Ruying Theory of Superiority and Inferiority", the party's struggle to rise in the south and north of Ganling, and so on, are all manifestations of this. The emergence of the state pastoral system on behalf of the state assassination history system is also necessary to adapt to the new situation of the rise of local forces. I can't go into detail here. The above four centrifugal forces are not just to mention their prominence, and do not mean that centrifugal forces stop here. Political unity cannot be reluctantly established until the development of centrifugal forces subsides. Therefore, the reunification of the two Jin Dynasties was only a flash in the pan, followed by the "Five Hu Chaohua". Since the end of the Han Dynasty, the centrifugal force has been the most important since the rise of the Hu and Qiang tribes. Their role in Chinese history is very similar to that of the Germanic peoples of the late Roman Empire in the West. At that time, the foreign tribes along the border in northern China, the west and even the northeast were in a period of rise and full of vitality. Their eagerness to try their hand on the stage of Chinese history is beyond concealment. Therefore, among the Han people, there were those who had foresight who were worried about it. Jin Chu Jiang Tong's "Migration Strategy" is the best evidence.

Lei Haizong once made an interesting observation on the cycle of Chinese history. He said that the ancient history of the West only went through the first cycle, so there was no second empire after the Roman Empire, and the Medieval Charlemagne Empire failed to unify Europe again. Chinese history ushered in a second cycle, so after the Qin and Han Dynasties there was the rise of the Sui and Tang unified empires. But the opening of this second cycle is not entirely a revival of Han Chinese culture. If we are not bound by the prejudices of Han Chinese-centrism, we will recognize the contribution of the so-called "Hu people". Zhu Xi once said: "Tang Yuanliu is out of Yidi, so I don't think it is strange that the boudoir is disrespectful. "Gap Yin scrupulously deduced his meaning, which is quite able to deduce the truth that Yuwen Tai used the Zhou Guanyuan to interpret the old customs, especially the relationship between the prefectural military system and the eight-part system. This was one of his big discoveries. However, the prefectural military system also has a Chinese background, and Tang Changru pointed out that the "Northern Fu Bing" of the Eastern Jin Dynasty can supplement Chen's theory. Therefore, in a nutshell, the unification of the Sui and Tang dynasties was the result of the gradual integration of the Hu and Han ethnic groups and cultures in the north and south. This is a long-term process that cannot be successful unless integration has reached the stage of maturity. In the fourth century, Fu Jian could not conquer the Eastern Jin Dynasty, and in the sixth century, Zhou and Sui Zhiping Chen were like water, which is why it was here.

The unification of the Sui and Tang dynasties was that the north conquered the south by force, but culturally the Hu regime in the north has also continuously absorbed the culture of the south. In the fifth century, Northern Qi Gaoyang once said: Yuwen Tai, according to Chang'an, claimed to be the legend of Shangcheng Han and Wei Zhengtong, and Jiangdong Xiao Yan had a lile and a crown, and most people in the north regarded it as the location of Zhengshuo. This phrase reflects the Hu people's admiration for southern culture. In the seventeenth year (493) of Wei Taihe,Wang Suben (王蘇) had brought the liturgical system of the early Southern Dynasty to the north. In the late Period of the Southern and Northern Dynasties, the North and the South not only had mutual markets, but also exchanged envoys and exchanged frequently. The Northern Hu Lords were quite envious of the talented rhetoric of the Southern scribes, which caused dissatisfaction among the Northern courtiers. Northern Zhou refused to send Yu Xin nan back, at least in part out of a love of southern poetry. When the Sui unified the world, Yang Guang served as the crown prince as the grand governor of Yangzhou, and the southern culture was extremely deep, and after he took the throne, he not only conceited himself with literature, but also wrote Wu language when he died. Tang Taizong was not immune to the influence of southern literature and art, so he had a bachelor's system and was good at the calligraphy of Wang Xizhi's father and son. Academically, the North was originally good at classics, but in the final Tang Dynasty, jinshi all focused on poetry, and the Anthology of Literature became the Tang Dynasty Xianxue. This is a clear proof of the cultural southernization of the Tang Dynasty. Classics were not really important in the Tang Dynasty, which is strongly proved by the fact that the Ming classics were not valued. Therefore, the unification of the Sui and Tang dynasties must be understood from a deeper cultural background, and cannot be simply regarded as a matter of political surface.

The Anshi Rebellion (755) was an epoch-making event of the Tang Dynasty, under which the political unity of the Tang Dynasty was extinct in name only, and Hebei was basically controlled by different Hu groups. In fact, there were various conflicting social and cultural forces in the Tang Dynasty from the beginning, but before the Anshi Rebellion, they were generally able to maintain a state of equilibrium, such as the Guanlong Huhan clique, the Shandong Old Clan and the Xinxing Jinshi as the three most important social classes. The relationship between them is intricate and cannot be discussed here, but the rise and fall of these classes and the transition from unification to division of the Tang Empire are deeply related. The origins of these forces must be traced back to the Era of the Northern and Southern Dynasties, and through long-term integration, a dynamic balance was achieved in the early Tang Dynasty. However, with the passage of time and the emergence of new forces (such as the deepening of the "Huhua" in Hebei), this balance was finally broken during the Middle and Tang Dynasties.

From the economic side, we can also see the same development process, that is, the balance is achieved by the integration of the North and the South, and then it is out of balance by the emergence of new factors. This development is more concentrated in the reform of the field tax system. Before the Anshi Rebellion, the rent, mediocrity, modulation and equalization of the field system were mutually exclusive, which was the tradition of the Northern Dynasty, and the focus of the economy was on agriculture. After the unification of the Sui Dynasty, the Juntian Decree was issued to the world, but the actual situation of the implementation of this system in the south is difficult to assert because the historical data is not prepared. The Dunhuang documents only prove that this system was implemented in the northwest region, but the land is far from being distributed. After the Anshi chaos, the two-tax system not only abandoned the ideal of Juntian, but also gradually shifted the focus of taxation to industry and commerce. Mr. Gap Yinke's so-called "Southern Dynasty" is quite well-founded. Below the Middle And Tang Dynasties, the proportion of commercial taxes in government revenue gradually increased (japanese people and Fujitsu have verified it), which is a very noteworthy phenomenon. The first master, Mr. Qian Binsi, on the "transfer of economy and culture between the north and the south", took the Anshi rebellion as the watershed, and could also be corroborated with the assertions of Chen Yinke, Kato Shigeru and others.

Although the division of the five generations has only been fifty years, its historical significance cannot be underestimated. In general, it can be seen as an indicator of the shift of the economic and cultural center of gravity from the north to the south. Therefore, among the Ten Kingdoms at that time, the cultural and economic aspects of the Southern Tang and Wuyue were particularly important. The construction of water conservancy in Jiangnan and the development of industry and commerce clearly show the general trend of history from north to south.

If we look at it to the greatest extent, following the Yongjia Rebellion of the Western Jin Dynasty, the center of gravity of Chinese history seems to have continued to shift from the northwest to the southeast, and one of the most important factors is that the ethnic minorities in the northwest and northeast are pushing towards the Central Plains one after another, until the Mongols and Manchurians have entered the whole of China and reached the peak. Therefore, on the unification and division of Chinese history, we must first study the problem that Japanese scholars call "conquering the dynasty". Since the Han Dynasty, the only unified dynasty established by the Han people has been Han and Ming, and the Tang Dynasty is in fact a mixture of Han and Hu. In the Song Dynasty, it confronted the Liao and Jin dynasties in the north, and historians have the purpose of being the second "Southern and Northern Dynasties". However, there were also two unified dynasties established by non-Han Chinese, namely the Yuan and the Qing. Therefore, objectively speaking, the history of China in the past two thousand years has been a situation in which Han and Hu shared the world. The influence of the "conquest dynasty" on China's political development was quite far-reaching.

The "province" that we still use today is the remnant of the "Xingzhongshu Province" of the Yuan Dynasty.

Since Liang Qichao, scholars have mostly identified China's two-thousand-year political form as the so-called "absolute monarchy." This is, of course, a conclusion based on Western concepts and classifications. This is not wrong, because the emperor is, at least theoretically, the last source of human power. The word "human" is specifically marked here, because in ancient political thought, power also has a superhuman basis, that is, "heaven". "Heaven" is the guarantee of imperial power, but at the same time it constitutes a restriction of imperial power. "The world under the heavens is not the world of one person, only the virtuous dwells" was a rather popular concept in the early Han Dynasty. Therefore, China's original monarchical system is not absolute and arbitrary. However, absolute monarchy has a tendency to become more and more intense in Chinese history, so people in recent times have always regarded the Ming and Qing dynasties as the peak era of absolutism.

We have reason to believe that this historical trend is related to "conquest dynasties", especially unified "conquest dynasties". The Ming Dynasty followed the Mongol Yuan, and the Qing Dynasty itself was a unified "conquering dynasty". Before the conquest of China, although the tribes maintained relatively equal relations between the tribes, they even implemented a system of chieftain election. However, after entering the Central Plains, they strengthened China's original autocratic system, such as Yelü Abaoji's "Tiyin" new officials after the Khitan Khan to control other party groups, and the "Su Wei Army" to expand the power of individuals. For example, the Manchu Emperor Taiji built the system of "sitting alone in the south" to abolish the system of monthly scores of the four baylors. Therefore, in the Ming Dynasty, the courtiers only worshiped the emperor four or five times, and in the Qing Dynasty, they changed to three kneels and nine prostrations.

This brings us to the question of separation between "politics" and "economics" and "culture". Authoritarian politics was constantly strengthened by the new factors brought about by the "conquest dynasty", and its basic orientation was inland, heavy on agriculture and light on commerce; its character was closed and exclusive. However, due to the gradual shift of economic and cultural center of gravity from the northwest inland to the southeast coast, China's economic history and cultural history have revealed the orientation and open spirit of the sea at least since the Southern Song Dynasty. In terms of economic history, the importance of overseas trade was discovered by Emperor Gaozong of the Song Dynasty at the beginning of the Southern Song Dynasty. He saw the high income of the municipal shipping department, and once said with emotion: If the income of the municipal shipping department can continue to increase, the state's expenses will not have to be taken from the peasants. In the late Ming Dynasty, overseas trade was quite developed, and people along the Fujian coast often "went to the field for half a year and went to the sea for half a year." Chinese colonization of the South China Sea began at this time. At that time, the foreign trade along the southeast coast also increased the annual harvest of the Ming government by a lot, so some people called it the "South Treasury of the Son of Heaven". It is under this general trend that Taiwan has a direct relationship with Chinese mainland. Zheng Zhilong, Chenggong father and son all started with maritime trade. (Both "pirate" nature).

However, the policy of the Ming and Qing dynasties strictly prohibited the people from going to sea, mainly for the sake of political exclusivity, at least in the early Ming and early Qing dynasties. During the same period, the overseas economic expansion of European countries was directly protected by the government, in sharp contrast to the situation in China. This is the best illustration of how the Politics and Economy of the West support each other and move in the same direction. Ming and Qing China, on the other hand, was politically and economically divided, almost the opposite. The closed and exclusive regimes with an inland orientation and an open and competitive commerce with a maritime orientation are mutually exclusive. Whether the expatriates in Nanyang and the Philippines were brutally persecuted or even massacred, their own governments sat idly by and did not come to their aid.

The marine orientation and openness in cultural history are most evident in the attitude of some scholars and doctors at the end of the Ming Dynasty to the Western studies introduced by the Jesuits. Fang Yizhi and Zhongtong father and son showed a high degree of excitement about Western astronomy, calendar, and mathematics. Famous jesuit priests such as Matteo Ricci, John Tang, and Kinnijin have all received great courtesy from scholars, as can be seen by a little reading of the poetry collections of the Ming and Qing dynasties.

Finally, I would like to point out in particular the new trend of Anti-Authoritarianism in Confucianism in the Ming and Qing Dynasties to illustrate the division between politics and thought. Modern critics of Confucianism often arbitrarily say that Confucianism serves authoritarian politics, that is, that political and Taoist (or political and ideological) are united in the system of unifying dynasties. Of course, no one can absolutist regimes have been using certain parts of Confucianism to embellish the legitimacy of the political order. But Christianity was used in the Middle Ages and early modern times in the West, as exemplified by the theocracy of monarchy. Those who study the history of Christianity do not, on this basis, completely negate the more important critical spirit of it. Ming and Qing Confucians did not lack a deep sense of political criticism, but in a very hidden way. Today we all push Huang Zongxi's "Ming Yi Waiting for The Fang" as the most systematic innovation in criticizing China's authoritarian politics. In fact, the origin of Huang's thought is Wang Yangming's teaching of conscience. It is not possible to argue in detail here about this layer. Gu Xing is clear at one end. One of Huang's main arguments was to make the right and wrong of the world openly discussed in schools in order to break the situation of "the right and wrong of the world from the imperial court" under authoritarian politics. If we remember that Wang Yangming said, "Conscience is only a heart of right and wrong," we can see that he wants to take the right to decide right and wrong from the imperial court to everyone. Yang Ming once said: "Seek it from the heart instead of also, although its words come from Confucius, and dare not think that it is also." "This is the most thorough anti-authoritarian, but it is only a circuitous way to avoid disaster. There are very few texts on politics in the YangMing concentration, but the philosophical discourses in them are not political on the surface, but have political connotations in the bones. (Yang Ming's psychology of avoiding trouble is most clearly revealed in his first conversation with Wang Geng, but it is only found in the Wang Xinzhai annals, and Wang Yang's next year's genealogy seems to be deliberately embellished.) Another important argument of huang is that "each man is selfish and each person has his own interests", so he advocates "private" to become "public", while opposing the traditional saying that there is "public" but no "private". This point was almost conclusive at the time of the Ming and Qing dynasties. Recently, the Japanese scholar Yuzo Mizoguchi has made a new view of the comparison of the public and private concepts between China and Japan. But I stumbled upon the idea that as early as the first half of the sixteenth century, the idea that "it is a saint who becomes a public servant for his own selfishness" predates Huang Zongxi, Gu Yanwu, Chen Qi, and others by more than a hundred years. This is also a covert way to protest against authoritarian politics, which is consistent with Wang Yangming's taking over the right of "right and wrong" to individuals. In short, since Wang Yangming and below, Confucians have sought space in society to avoid direct and positive conflicts with authoritarian regimes, but their anti-authoritarian spirit can be seen everywhere. YangMing Houxue, especially the Taizhou faction borrowed the township covenant to give lectures, that is, the positive presentation of this spirit. The innovative part of Ming and Qing Confucianism is divided rather than unified with authoritarian politics, which is an undeniable historical fact.

Although the political division in China's history is worth studying, its deeper dynamics are more worthy of our attention.

Traveled to Taipei on July 13, 1994

This article is reproduced from the "Don't Eat My Yellow" public account.