The Han abandon the Western Regions

In 106 the states of the Western Regions rose and attacked Ren Shang, Ban Chao’s successor as Protector General, at Kashgar (Shule). The siege was lifted and Ren Shang recalled; the new Protector General, Duan Xi, held the small fort of Tagan in Kucha together with Zhao Bo. The deputy colonel Liang Qin, sent with 5,000 Qiang and Hu horsemen from the four Hexi commanderies, tricked King Bai Ba of Kucha into admitting him to his capital and brought in Duan Xi and Zhao Bo, which gave the Chinese eight to nine thousand men. The Kuchean officials then rose against their king and, joined by Wensu and Gumo, besieged the town with tens of thousands of troops; after several months of fighting Liang Qin’s force routed them, killing more than 10,000.

The victory did not reopen the road to China, and the ministers argued that the Western Regions were remote, rebelled again and again, and that the garrisons and military colonies cost endless sums. On the renxu day of the sixth month of the first Yongchu year — 29 July 107 — the post of Protector General was abolished, and the cavalry commandant Wang Hong was sent with troops from Guanzhong to bring back Liang Qin, Duan Xi, Zhao Bo and the colonists of Yiwu (Hami) and Liuzhong; Ban Chao’s son Ban Yong rode out from Dunhuang as a major to meet them. The Qiang horsemen levied for the withdrawal mutinied, and the mutiny grew into a Qiang war on the northwestern frontier that lasted more than ten years.

For more than ten years afterwards there were no Han officials in the Western Regions. The Northern Xiongnu took control of the oasis kingdoms again and raided the Chinese frontier together with them; a garrison placed at Yiwu in 119 was wiped out within months.