Li Yuanhao proclaims the Great Xia (Western Xia)

The Tanguts, described in Chinese records as descendants of the Western Qiang, had migrated in the 7th century from the Tibetan borderlands to the north-west of China, and from 881 their chiefs ruled the Xiazhou region as nominal governors of the Tang and its successors, bearing the imperial surname Li and later, under the Song, Zhao. Li Deming expanded westwards, and his son Yuanhao took Ganzhou from the Uyghurs in 1028. Succeeding his father in 1032, Yuanhao replaced the Chinese surname of his clan with the Tangut name Weiming, ordered his men to shave the tops of their heads on pain of death and introduced new dress; in 1036 a Tangut script, attributed to Yeli Renrong, was put into use in government, and the translation of Chinese and Tibetan works began. By then he had annexed the Ganzhou Uyghur kingdom and the Guiyi circuit around Dunhuang, gaining the Hexi Corridor.

On 10 November 1038 Yuanhao performed the rites at a suburban altar and took the imperial title, the dynastic name Great Xia and the era name Tianshou Lifa Yanzuo; in Tangut he called himself wuzu, ‘Son of Heaven’. He set up a Chinese-style administration with a Secretariat, a Bureau of Military Affairs and sixteen bureaus on top of a militarised tribal army. In a memorial to the Song in 1039 he claimed descent from the Tuoba who had founded the Northern Wei, boasted of his new script, dress and rites, and asked to be recognised as a ‘ruler facing south’. Emperor Renzong's court instead stripped him of his Song titles, closed the border markets and offered a reward for his head.

In the war that followed the Xia routed Song armies at Sanchuankou (1040), Haoshuichuan (1041) and Dingchuan (1042), but could not break the Song line of forts, and the fighting exhausted its economy. The Liao used the Song's difficulties to raise its annual payments in 1042, then quarrelled with the Xia, invaded it in 1044 and was beaten. That year Yuanhao made peace with the Song: he called himself a subject in his letters, and the Song recognised him as ruler of the Xia and sent yearly gifts of silk, silver and tea. He died in 1048 of a wound inflicted by his son. The Western Xia, a Buddhist state with its own script, lasted until the Mongol conquest of 1227.