Fall of the Tang: the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms

After the rebellion of Huang Chao real power in the Tang empire passed to the military governors (jiedushi), whose authority had been growing since the An Lushan rebellion. The strongest of them was Zhu Wen, a former rebel commander who had gone over to the Tang in 882 and governed Bianzhou, the later Kaifeng, from 883. In 904 he forced Emperor Zhaozong, his court and the people of Chang’an to move to Luoyang, then had the emperor killed and enthroned his thirteen-year-old son, Emperor Ai; in 905, according to the Zizhi tongjian, more than thirty senior officials were killed in one night at the Baima post station and thrown into the Yellow River. On 12 May 907 Emperor Ai issued a rescript yielding the throne; on 1 June Zhu Wen was enthroned in Kaifeng, and on 5 June he proclaimed an amnesty, a new era and the state of Great Liang. The deposed emperor was poisoned in March 908. Li Keyong in Hedong, Li Maozhen in Fengxiang and Yang Wo in Huainan kept the Tang era name, and later in 907 Wang Jian in Sichuan proclaimed himself emperor of Shu.

The ‘Five Dynasties’ are the regimes that held the Central Plain one after another: the Later Liang (907–923), the Later Tang (923–936), the Later Jin (936–947), the Later Han (947–951) and the Later Zhou (951–960). Three of them were founded by Shatuo Turks, and each was born of a coup or a war. The Khitans became arbiters of the north: in 936 Shi Jingtang won the throne of the Later Jin with their help, promising them the Sixteen Prefectures around present-day Beijing, which were handed over in 938, and in 947 the Khitan emperor occupied Kaifeng for about three months. The southern kingdoms — Wu and its successor the Southern Tang, Wuyue, Min, Chu, the Southern Han, the Former and Later Shu in Sichuan and Jingnan, with the Northern Han in Shanxi counted as the tenth — were more stable. Their ports traded overseas, the middle Yangtze and Sichuan produced tea and porcelain, and woodblock printing became common. The term ‘Five Dynasties’ was coined by Song historians, who regarded the northern regimes as the legitimate ones.

Reunification began under the Later Zhou. Guo Wei (951–954) and his adopted son Chai Rong (954–959) curbed the military governors and strengthened the palace army; Chai Rong defeated the Northern Han and its Khitan allies at Gaoping in 954 and in 956–958 took the lands of the Southern Tang north of the Yangtze. After his death in 959 the throne passed to a child, and on 3 February 960 the palace army proclaimed its commander Zhao Kuangyin emperor. The Song absorbed the southern kingdoms between 963 and 978 and conquered the Northern Han in 979, which is why the period is sometimes dated 907–979; the Sixteen Prefectures remained in Khitan hands.