by Ling Zhang
A survivor's mentality also dominated the ways in which the state dealt with domestic issues, as it encountered formidable players within its domain, such as the Yellow River and the Hebei Plain. The increasingly flood-prone Yellow River began to wreak havoc at the heart of the state's territory, seriously threatening the stability of the state from the very beginning of its rule. As we shall see in Chapters 3 and 4, the state responded to the mounting environmental pressure by going into crisis mode: it innovated peculiar hydraulic solutions that forced the river to shift northward into the Hebei Plain. The present chapter reveals how the state handled Hebei. The state inherited a heavy historical legacy that portrayed Hebei as a decentralizing force and potential traitor; this legacy haunted the state with a deep sense of fear and distrust of the region. On the one hand, it had no choice but to rely on Hebei's solidarity as a strong military buffer zone, across which Song and Liao diplomats traveled, and in which the state placed soldiers, weapons, and military supplies, as well as constructed fortresses and moats. On the other hand, the state remained suspicious of Hebei for its dubious loyalty to the central authority. This land, given its long-term political, military, and socio-economic autonomy, became a hotbed of spies who leaked security information to the Khitan, smugglers who sold strategic goods like iron and copper coin abroad, and outlaws that the Song's military could easily turn into if they became disenchanted with the court.
For the Song state, the question became how to subdue this wild land and curb its military traditions and political ambitions. More than that, it was also about how to appropriate Hebei into something beneficial and resourceful – as a submissive periphery of the empire and a loyal servant of the state, who would quietly guard the heart of the regime from a northeastern periphery. As the ensuing pages demonstrate, during the first eight decades of the Song period, the state carried out what I call a Hebei project, which appropriated control over life on the Hebei Plain in political, military, and socio-economic terms, and even modified the physical appearance of the land.
2.1 Establishing a Military Entity in Demilitarized Hebei
Throughout the Northern Song period, Hebei stood at the forefront of the Song's resistance against the Khitan's Liao Dynasty. Hence, it remained the most heavily militarized region in the empire. Between 960 and early 1004, the two states engaged in many military actions against each other, most of which took place in Hebei. In 1004, within a matter of days, a Khitan army stormed through Hebei all the way to its southern border, the Yellow River. The loss of Hebei terrified the Song imperial court, which, located a mere hundred kilometers south of the Yellow River, could be reached by Khitan cavalry within a day or two. Emperor Zhenzong 真宗 (968–1022) was compelled to journey northward across the Yellow River and entered the soon to be captured southern land of Hebei. This gesture of determination, as demonstrated by setting royal feet on Hebei's soil, if only on its southern tip, bore enormous symbolic meaning. It strengthened the Song's claims over the land and its hold over the entire empire.
The traumatic experience of wars and their associations with Hebei reinforced the Song state's conviction that without Hebei's solidarity, there would be no Song state. The state had to protect and strengthen Hebei's land and people in order for them to function in return as an effective military entity to defend the state. Hence, from the very beginning of its encounters with Hebei, the state showed a strong presence in the region. It invested heavily in shaping Hebei's land, people, and society in accordance with its political and military priorities. In northern Hebei, it constructed a series of walled cities as military garrisons along the southern bank of the Juma River.7 These cities were surrounded by military settlements run by battle troops – the Imperial Armies. The cities were interconnected by express roads and waterways. During any kind of emergency, troops and military resources could move from one place to another in accordance with need. Hence, the northernmost strip of Hebei, called the “immediate frontier” (yanbian 沿邊 or yuanbian 緣邊), as vast as it was, could function as a single entity during any military action.8
South of the frontier area, the rest of Hebei was divided into a “secondary frontier area” (cibian 次邊) in central Hebei and “interior prefectures and commanderies” (jinli zhoujun 近里州軍) in southern Hebei, depending on their strategic importance. The administrative districts in the secondary frontier area supplemented the first frontier area and coordinated the distribution of military supplies. The districts in the interior, southern part of Hebei were the region's political and economic bases. Enjoying a relatively larger civilian population, this area engaged in agriculture and produced a considerable portion of basic goods that Hebei's military and civil administration demanded.
Illustration 7. Hebei's Administrative Districts in the Early Song Period
This three-tiered strategic system was loosely defined. Extant historical records do not specify which prefectures or commanderies each tier possessed, nor how the districts of the three tiers corresponded to and coordinated with each other in actuality. There is no record of the day-to-day operation of the system. We do know that the placement of the troops was spread throughout various parts of Hebei, rather than being concentrated in specific places along the frontier. A considerable portion of the troops was stationed in more southern districts where access to water transportation and food was convenient.9 This arrangement made possible a multilayered defense system with an efficient backup for areas on the frontlines of battle. It also reduced the government's need to transport all its military supplies over long distances to the northern frontier. A large amount of supplies could be collected from local areas and stored in nearby prefectures, thus reducing the risk that all supplies could be destroyed at the same time in a war or a natural disaster. When a food shortage occurred in one area of Hebei, troops could be mobilized to access food in another area.10
Hebei's military forces kept growing over the decades. After peace returned in 1005, Hebei's military no longer engaged in war. Despite this, by the early 1040s it had acquired an army that included 477,000 men for the Imperial Armies, the District Armies, and various militias.11 This number continued to grow in the late 1060s, when a reformist government supported policies for “strengthening the military.” The heavy military presence served the purpose of intimidating the Khitan and suppressing their ambitions for another invasion. In reality, it might have mainly served the function of assuaging the Song state's sense of insecurity.
The massive military population and the geographic division of their administrative centers was a great drain on military supplies. As we shall discuss later in this chapter, Hebei's civilian population growth and its economy were too slow to meet the soaring demands of its military. In the late eleventh century, Hebei's military demanded six million dan (1 dan 石 ≈ 67 liters) of grain and other kinds of supplies every year, most of which had to be shipped from southern and central China. To guarantee such external supplies, the state began to build up Hebei's transportation infrastructure as a means of obtaining goods and supplying the military. In particular, the state exploited existing waterways like the Yuhe Canal, previously the Yongji Canal.12 Essential to Hebei's economic boom before the ninth century but declining substantially during the ninth and tenth centuries due to north China's political chaos and civil war, the canal was revived in the late tenth century. Running from Hebei's southwestern corner to its northeastern end, with the exception of the frozen winter months, this canal provided efficient transport to integrate Hebei's military and civil units and to facilitate the exchange of goods between them. Its northern terminus was linked with frontier and local streams. These interconnected bodies of water carried boats westward to frontier trading sites in Bazhou 霸州 and Xiongzhou 雄州, and then farther west to Dingzhou 定州, the region that produced the most precious porcelain and silk in the Song empire. The canal's southern end crossed the Yellow River to connect with the Bianhe 汴河 Canal, an economic artery during the Song period. This connec
tion allowed endless shipments of grain and other bulky goods from the lower Yangtze valley, the breadbasket of southeast China, to the center of military consumption, Hebei. As Hebei's military population continued to rise, the role of the southern goods as military supplies became increasingly crucial. The availability of the Yuhe Canal itself and its interconnection with other waterways significantly shortened the distance between Hebei and other parts of Song China. It helped Hebei to overcome its socio-economic shortage and to maintain the existence and operation of this frontier land's military system.
In areas around the Yuhe Canal, the state endeavored to modify the land in order to construct a vast network of supporting transportation infrastructure. Highways were laid down, small canals were opened, tunnels were constructed, and a series of ponds and ditches were dredged.13 Some of this infrastructure was meant to facilitate transportation throughout the frontier provinces; some were erected as manmade barriers to defend the low-lying plain against the advancement of future enemies. As will be examined in greater detail shortly, this drastic transformation of Hebei's physical landscape for military purposes, which led to various economic and environmental implications over the next century, should be considered a significant component of the state's political and military appropriation of Hebei.
As waterways and roads penetrated the three tiers of the strategic system, weaving every inch of the land into an integral military geography, the state added a lofty layer of governing, supervising, and mediating institutions, such as the Fiscal Commission and the Pacification Commission. These provincial-level institutions were not grounded in Hebei's regional or local bureaucratic structure. The commissioners were appointed by the imperial court; they stayed in Hebei for just a few years and rarely had a chance to become invested in local business. These institutions and officials stood between the central government and Hebei's local authorities to facilitate their vertical communication. Horizontally, they bridged the division between Hebei's military authorities and civil governments, as well as managed interregional exchanges of resources in and out of Hebei. They played essential roles in synchronizing the operation of the entire military hierarchy, from the state-level leadership, to Hebei's commanders, and to ground-level military execution. They certainly organized and oversaw the lateral collaboration of many districts throughout Hebei.
Given this multilayered strategic system, the giant military population, the multiple means of transportation, and the supervising and mediating institutions, the imperial state had established within Hebei a complex, integrated military entity. This fairly thorough militarization of Hebei, however, brought its own risks. Given the autonomous tradition in the region, which we have seen in Chapter 1, how could the imperial state prevent a militarized Hebei from falling back into a self-reliant, independent, and (worse still) anti-state situation? The state had to work equally hard to contain Hebei's decentralizing potentials. To do so, the state employed two main strategies: first, it put Hebei's military power under the direct control of the central government; and second, it demilitarized Hebei socially and culturally by promoting a civil culture.14
First and foremost, the effectiveness of Hebei's military entity, as the state anticipated, was embedded within an empire-wide system of resource collection and distribution. Hebei's military force was so massive that its own land and people could not generate enough agricultural production to sustain it. The days when a warlord could resist state rule by amassing a few thousand men and dominating the wealth of several counties were over. Hebei had to depend heavily on the importation of food, clothes, and cash from the rest of China. Such interregional transactions could hardly be done without the organization and coordination of state-level institutions. Maintaining the extensive transportation infrastructure was itself expensive; it had to rely on the state's organization and investments. In terms of other kinds of military resources, Hebei civilians were prohibited from large gatherings and from storing weapons; they were discouraged from practicing martial arts and playing with knives and swords. Iron mining and smelting had long been an important industry in western Hebei; it produced the weaponry that had strengthened Hebei's warlords in previous centuries and continued to equip the Song's frontier troops. Now, the state put iron production and circulation under the state's control, allowing only a small amount of iron to flow into the civilian society for use in agricultural tools.15 Whenever farmers slaughtered cattle, or fishermen harvested fish, they had to turn over to the government the resulting tendons and fish bladders, since these materials could be used to produce strings for bows and glue for weapons.16 Any resource that could be employed for military uses fell under the state control. Such state control prevented Hebei's military entity from becoming self-sufficient. In this sense, Hebei's troops and military infrastructure become only some components in the overall military apparatus of the imperial state.17
Hebei's dependence on the state was also reinforced by the state's insistence on a single military leadership. The central government oversaw Hebei's day-to-day military operations, with the emperor himself and his top officials – Grand Councilors and the Bureau of Military Affairs – as the final decision makers. They designed the plans for how Hebei's military forces should act in any critical circumstance, and they wielded the final power to decide how to allocate Hebei's troops and mobilize other resources. The Song emperors, though many of them did not have actual battle experience, were known for their personal intervention in military affairs that went on hundred kilometers away on the frontier. They prescribed military commanders with secret strategies before the latter departed for war; they did not hesitate to send generals letters in the middle of battle, interrupting their existing plans and instructing them in new tactics. That the emperors tended to act as helicopter commanders was not to the benefit of the Song military, and it may have in fact contributed to the Song's constant military failures. Nevertheless, the virtue of such state intervention was that it allowed the central government a solid control over its frontier forces.
The state increased its control via subtle means as well. Emperor Taizu 太祖 (927–976), founder of the Song Dynasty, persuaded his prominent generals into early retirement and placed talented young leaders of lesser backgrounds in important positions. The military commanders in this new era neither resided in one region over the long term – certainly not in their hometowns – nor were given permanent charge over a certain set of troops, which was different from what Hebei's regional warlords did in the past. Rather, a general was assigned by the state to lead a set of troops for a specific military task. Soon after the task was completed, the commander was sent by the court to another place to take up another position and another task. This arrangement of personnel resulted in a situation in which “commanders know nothing about the soldiers and soldiers recognize no commanders.”18 The commanders were unable to develop personal armies as warlords did in the previous centuries.
Similar changes were made to the lives of soldiers. In previous centuries, the armies relied on local volunteer soldiers, who carried their own equipments and acquired supplies from their families. Their devotion and loyalty rose from their attachment to their people and land; they fought for their own local interests, not for a remote central government. Their sense of the existence of an imperial state was rather weak. These troops gave rise to Hebei's powerful warlords, who were deeply rooted in regional identities and interests. To reverse the situation, the Song state recruited professional soldiers, at least for the Imperial Armies, who came from different parts of north China and were sent to remote garrisons such as in Hebei. Treating their roles as mere jobs, these men earned monthly salaries from the government and were well aware of their employment relationship with the state in the name of an emperor, instead of with individual commanders. Their promotion and demotion were determined by a single set of rules that the state regulated, instead of by their personal ties with commanders. More importantly, the troops’ maintenance in terms of var
ious supplies came from state revenues and was centrally planned, arranged, and distributed. The dissociation between a soldier's personal career and the well-being of his family and hometown led to the rise of professional armies, whose loyalty was oriented more to the state than to the region of Hebei. With these measures, the state managed to break down family and regional ties as well as personal affections that had perpetuated Hebei's military autonomy for many centuries. The true military power fell firmly in the hands of the state.
The second strategy to curb Hebei's decentralizing potential was that, along with centralizing military power, the state was dedicated to promoting civil governance and civil culture in order to demilitarize Hebei's local governments and society.19 The first two emperors, although accomplished generals, were keen to promote their image as learned scholars. They demonstrated their passion and knowledge about books and calligraphy; they urged their generals to learn reading and writing, sometimes by publicly shaming them for being illiterate. The first four decades of the Song period saw a rapid shift in cultural preferences in the government as well as in the broader society. More and more scholars, who discussed war rather than personally participated in war, entered the government. The government's tendency of “emphasizing the civil and repressing the martial (zhongwen qingwu 重文輕武)” encouraged more and more people to acquire high social status, fame, and wealth by assuming civil official positions. The social and political status of military officers continued to decrease. Over time, people who wished to serve in the government began to prefer the civil track to the military track.20