rulers such as the empress Wu (690- it did not pay enough attention to active po

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rulers such as the empress Wu (690- it did not pay enough attention to active political obedience. Thousands of shrines and monasteries nder one of the few women to reign over China, she ament. Like earlier dynasties, notably the Qin tant minority religion in China, but its per smd rtependent landlords. Their taxing power was even more than their Han predecessors, clearly felt bolis jo5), oa reestablished the power of the central were destroyed. Buddhism remained an impor iod of growth was forcibly brought to a halt. The Tang. the Tang government reduced the power e government required the free peas- o submit to military training, which greatly sed the power of the state and its role in in in favor of direct payment by peasants tothat they had both the right and the duty to regu- late the beliefs of their subjects in the interests o state. Th political loyalty The dynastic decline of the Tang began in ives. Finally, the government established prehensive, accurate censuses of people and as the means for imposing fair but also e taxation. A growing bureaucracy accompa ed these new measures, and the civil service ex- minations, based on political knowledge but also Chinese philosophy and literature, were revived. As before, this examination system provided relatively able bureaucrats, although drawn mainly from the upper classes, and also promoted cultural unity within the empire. Indeed, the bureaucratic system was greatly elaborated under the Tang. Examina- tions became stricter, and education counted far more than birthright as the aristocratic role faded in favor of a scholar-bureaucrat ideal. Bureaucrats even amassed the authority to correct the emperor by citing relevant Confucian wisdom or historical the late 700s. Government became less effective. Earlier population Read the Document lang Daizong on Thegrowth, the result Art of Govemment on MyHistoryLab.com of Tang prosper- ity, had increased as poverty; there w not enough land to go around. The Tang policy of direct taxation on peasants drove the latter to seek landlord protection and spurred a series of major popular protests. Attacks by nomads from central Asia increased. The Tang dynasty was fi nally displaced by civil war in 906. However, this time chaos did not last long, for the traditions centralized rule were too powerful to lapse. The dynasty might fade, but the bureaucratic state was virtually indestructible A new dynasty, the Song, came into power in 960. Again, it broke the power of local military leaders, encouraging them to enter civilian life The Song dynasty did not regain all the territory the Tang had held; indeed, northern China, along the Huanghe River, remained in the hands of no- madic invaders, including some Mongol groups. The founder of the Song dynasty, a northern gen- eral named Zhao Kuangyin, realized that he could not take on all enemies simultaneously, so he was willing to allow the continued presence of the The Tang program ultimately included a vigor-nomadic warriors in the north. But he developed an excellent strategy for assuming control of the prosperous southern states, and he extended his examples The Tang dynasty resumed the tradition of extensive government functions, regulating trade, building roads and nizing justice and defense. A new agency, the Board of Censors, was created to supervise the bureau- Read the Document An Essay Question fromcanals, and orga the Chinese Imperial Examination System on MyHistoryLab.com cracy and guard against misconduct. ous attack on Buddhism as a potentially subversive element. Although early Tang emperors had fa vored Buddhism, the religion was finally officially rejected, as alien and subversive, mainly because influence into Indochina. Despite sporadic war- fare, the Song dynasty was economically dynamic,

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Unusual aspects of an emperor's instructions

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