A Study Of Qi - Qi Regime

The Army of JIN Dynasty treaded south and broke the capital of North SONG Dynasty in the period of Jingkang. As a result, two emperors of SONG Dynasty were held captives. Without the intention of directly governing the central land, JIN Dynasty, against historical routines, abolished the regime of SONG Dynasty and set up ZHANG Bangchang and LIU Yu as puppet emperors successively, two figures without any literal power and inherited identity. This was an exceptional occurrence in the history.At the moment, many in JIN believed it was beneficial to keep the government of SONG Qinzong and forced him to cede territory and pay tribute annually. In this way JIN would constantly get benefits in the long run. JIN understood the fact that a new puppet regime would hardly stabilized the situation in the central land. However, under the influence of internal faction conflict in JIN, it finally decided to give up SONG and set up a new regime named CHU. After the abolishment of CHU, internal faction conflict resulted in giving up the peace negotiation with South SONG dynasty. Therefore, it established a new regime-"Great QI", whose emperor is LIU Yu, a surrendered official of SONG.From the processes of JIN’s setting up the two puppet regimes, it was obvious that there existed three major factions:ZONGHAN, TAIZONG and TAIZU. In order to win in the power competition, the interest of JIN was expendable. This situation was formed thanks to WANYAN Aguda’s early death, which resulted in his failure to establish the imperial autocracy after eliminating the LIAO Dynasty. Therefore, the subsequent JIN TAIZONG failed to rule over the two military aristocracy groups——ZONGHAN faction and TAIZU faction. As a consequence, the principal decisions in early JIN were almost the result of mutual game of the three factions.After the puppet regime was founded, its territory expanded from the initial Henan, Shandong, to Shaanxi with the population gradually reaching to15million. The Puppet QI focused more on its military power than its cultural improvement, recruiting personnel without strict background censorship and applying cruel penalties to convicts. After inheriting the system from North SONG Dynasty, the government underwent many reforms in order to adapt to new situations. For example, the government converted the tri-province system into uni-provincial system with Shangshusheng serving its core. Based on the law system named as Baojiafa created by WANG Anshi, it developed a unique military system whose power was mainly composed of militia.Due to its political illegitimacy, negligence to its ritual establishment, and its ignorance to the basic standards of moralities, Puppet QI didn’t get approval by scholars and general people at the time. On the other hand, Puppet QI ended the invasion and damage from JIN army and the chaos and turmoil by roving bandits, and therefore people in central land could resume their food cultivation process, so the regime was gradually accepted by most average inhabitants. The submission of so many scholars to Puppet QI could be partially attributed to the impact of the novel culture crashing traditional political ideas. Especially, the Theory of Legitimacy by OUYANG Xiu undermined the power of morality, so quite a few scholars turned to a more practical choice, which helped to set up the political foundation of Puppet QI government.Once the Puppet QI government had set up, it involved into the internal faction conflict of JIN dynasty as a relatively independent political entity. Since LIU Yu changed his allegiance to from one faction to another, the internal faction conflict in JIN was intensified. This greatly altered the political pattern of JIN, and Puppet QI itself finally became a sacrifice in the conflict. In addition, the attemption of the Puppet QI to annihilate South SONG temporily reconciled the conflict between the hawks and doves in the government of South SONG, leading to a ground where they agreed temporarily to fight against QI but held peace talks with JIN, strengthening the internal cohesion of South SONG. The fact that LIU Yu was born from a humble family and was made an emperor totally by JIN highlighted the legitimacy of emperor SONG GAOZONG, thus increasing the political appeal of South SONG regime. Therefore, it is safe to say that the stabilization of Southern SONG dynasty depended a lot on the appearance of the Puppet QI.After the QI government was abolished by JIN, the officials was kept on their original posts. Therefore, the JIN government could rule central land smoothly. Conversely, this process promoted the sincization of the upper class of Jurchens. Due to the eight years’ Puppet QI governing, JIN treated the former QI civilians as their own. After many Jurzhens moved to the central land, JIN government didn’t drive the locals out of their territories but mingled Jurchen immigrants with them, which proved to be a significant factor accelerating sincization process of Jurchens.In short, both the establishment and demolishment of Puppet QI was the outcome of inner conflict of JIN dynasty. As Puppet QI intensified the inner conflict of JIN, it brought cohesion to South SONG, promoting the formation of juxtaposition of the two regimes-SONG and JIN-in south and north of Huaihe River respectively. Furthermeore, Puppet QI exerted a profound influence in the subsequent rule of JIN over central land and in the ethnic integration in central land.