The Tang Dynasty Years National Policy Research

Throughout the ancient Chinese history, how to handle the relationship between the central plains and the border ethnic is one of the most important issues that all the emperors must carefully think about, the policies and measures to deal with the issue of ethnic minorities, and the chain of interaction among the ethnic minorities would inevitably have an important, sometimes even decisive impact, on the rule patterns of the central plains. The first emperor to handle the border ethnic issues of Tang dynasty is Tang Gaozu, and the next twenty-three years ruled by Tang Taizong was the period that the strategies of border ethnic issues of Tang dynasty was transferred from "conservative" to "expanding", and Tang Taizong should actually take the credit for laying the basic structure of minority policies of Tang regime for a long period of time. Time passed by, even though the time and space that Emperor Tang Taizong dealt with the border ethnic issues have changed, the basic ideas, concepts and policies of Tang Taizong still have important reference meanings due to his representative position in the Chinese emperors.The previous researches are very fruitful and there are still many loopholes. First, most of the researches concentrated on a special time point and a special relationship with one minority of Tang Zhenguan years, they didn’t cover the whole period, so they were lack of macroscopic and overall view. Second, some studies got too many conclusions on "what are the national policies of Tang Taizong", and ignored the change of policies in the twenty-three years of Zhenguan period, it is difficult to reflect the overall view of the national policy of Zhenguan period. Third, some of the researches got the conclusions from the remarks or speeches of Tang Taizong, not from his practices. They focused too much on his words rather than his deeds, so the conclusions can not reflect the real situation. To better slove the problem, we believe that the studies of the national policies of Tang Taizong should cover all the twenty-three years of Zhenguan period, and take all districts into account and most of the ethnic groups in frontier including east Turk, west Turk, Xueyantuo, Tuyuhun, Huihe, Tubo, Gaogouli, uses all kinds of basic materials containing the words and deeds of Tang Taizong, as well as the peace and war of Zhenguan period. Only in this way, we can get a full perspective of the national policies of Zhenguan period.In chapter one, this paper analyzed the policy background of Tang dynasty from the angle of traditional national policy making of the past dynasty and the frontier situation of Tang dynasty. In chapter two to chapter four, we comprehensively analyzed the national policies of Zhenguan era based on the three major policies of Jimifuzhou system, marriage policy and the war policy. Among these discussions, we put most of attention on the study of the moderate adjustment from Dudufu to Duhufu, the failure of marriages with some of the minorities, and the wars with some of the minorities. In chapter five, we focused on the territory strategy of Tang Taizong and its relationship with his national policies based on the cases of Kang, Gaochang and Gaogouli. In the last chapter, we summarized the essence thought of Tang Taizong’s national policies, and discussed the transition of Tang Taizong’s national strategy based on the statistics of frequency of peace and war in Zhenguan ear, then we explored some other elements that affected Tang Taizong’s national policies from the perspectives such as the blood lineage of Tang royal family, and the life experience of the cabinet members of Tang Taizong.Based on the analysis, we get the conclusions as follows:1.Through the twenty-three years of Zhenguan period, there are two main theories:One is "as long as the central district is safe, the ethnic groups would come to surrender ", the other is "if they surrender, use the conciliatory policy; if they rebel, use the punitive policy". The former is to understand the relationship of Tang central government with these minorities from a strategic point of view, that the stability of the central plains is a prerequisite of controlling the broder areas. The latter is to clarify the basic principles of central government’s national policies from a tactical angle, that different policies are not muturally exclusive. Under the two theories, Tang Taizong used Jimifuzhou policy, marriage policy and war policy as the three pillars of his national policies;2.The settings and distributions of Jimifuzhou of Tang Zhenguan years is an indirect reflectment of the "Guanzhong-oriented policies" of early Tang. The transition from Jimifuzhou to the establishment of Anxi Duhufu in Zhenguan ear was an important adjustment of Jimifuzhou policy, mean a change from indirect management to direct management, which is the combined results of many elements from the subjective reason that Tang Taizong attached great importance to the western strategic position, to the objective reason that west Turk was still a strong force in Western region;3.Tang Taizhong’s first consideration in marriage policy is the power of the ethnic groups, if it is weak, there was no need to use the marriage policy, if it is strong, he broke them down and then used the marriage policy. The fundamental purpose of marriage policy is to stabilize and expand the territory of Tang Dynasty. The war policy is an important part of Tang Taizong’s national policies, which includes:north-forwarding strategy; being credible, humble and strong; divide the minorities and conquer them, keep friendly relations with distant ones and attack those nearby; better to make peace with victory than without one.4.The national policies of Tang Taizong were highly related to his territory view. From this angle, Tang Taizong’s national policies were to build a three levels system of "inner-outer-foreign" and maintain the leadership of Tang central government."Inner" means the central region, including the main states under the jurisdiction of Tang dynasty;"Outer" is the frontier area on the map of Tang dynasty, including the Jimifuzhou districts, as well as the frontier area that used to be under the control of Han dynasty;"Foreign" is the circumjacent areas of Tang dynasty, when Tang Empire get powerful, it expanded its national boundaries, and the "foreign" district would become "outer" district and the "outer" district would become the "inner"district.