The weak Daizong was succeeded by a tough, intelligent activist emperor, Dezong (reigned 779–805), who was determined to restore the fortunes of the dynasty. He reconstituted much of the old central administration and decided on a showdown with the forces of local autonomy. As a first step, in 780 he promulgated a new system of taxation, under which each province was assessed a quota of taxes, the collection of which was to be left to the provincial government. This was a radical measure, for it abandoned the traditional concept of head taxes levied at a uniform rate throughout the empire and also began the assessment of taxes in terms of money.
Those in the semi-independent provinces of the northeast saw this as a threat to their independence, and, when it became apparent that Dezong was determined to carry out consistently tough policies toward the northeast—reducing their armies and even denying them the right to appoint their own governors—the Hebei provinces rebelled. From 781 to 786 there was a wave of rebellions not only in the northeastern provinces but also in the Huai valley and in the area of the capital itself. These events brought the Tang even closer to disaster than had the An Lushan rising. The situation was saved because at a crucial moment the rebels fell out among themselves and because the south remained loyal. In the end, the settlement negotiated with the governors of Hebei virtually endorsed the preceding status quo, although the court made some marginal inroads by establishing two small new provinces in Hebei.
After that disaster, Dezong pursued a much more careful and passive policy toward the provinces. Governors were left in office for long periods, and hereditary succession continued. Nonetheless, the latter part of Dezong’s reign was a period of steady achievement. The new tax system was gradually enforced and proved remarkably successful; it remained the basis of the tax structure until Ming times. Revenues increased steadily, and Dezong left behind him a wealthy state. Militarily, he was also generally successfuclass="underline" the Tibetan threat was contained, Nanzhao was won from its alliance with the Tibetans, and the garrisons of the northwest were strengthened. At the same time, Dezong built up large new palace armies, giving the central government a powerful striking force—numbering some 100,000 men by the end of his reign. Command was given to eunuchs considered loyal to the throne. The death of Dezong in 805 was followed by the brief reign of Shunzong, an invalid monarch whose court was dominated by the clique of Wang Shuwen and Wang Pei. They planned to take control of the palace armies from the eunuchs but failed.
The struggle for central authority
Under Xianzong (reigned 805–820) the Tang regained a great deal of its power. Xianzong, a tough and ruthless ruler who kept a firm hand on affairs, is notable chiefly for his successful policies toward the provinces. Rebellions in Sichuan (806) and the Yangtze delta (807) were quickly put down. After an abortive campaign (809–810) that was badly bungled by a favourite eunuch commander, the court was again forced to compromise with the governors of Hebei. A fresh wave of trouble came in 814–817 with a rebellion in Huaixi, in the upper Huai valley, that threatened the canal route. That uprising was crushed and the province divided up among its neighbours. The Pinglu army in Shandong rebelled in 818 and suffered the same fate. Xianzong thus restored the authority of the central government throughout most of the empire. His success was based largely upon the palace armies. The fact that these were controlled by eunuchs placed a great measure of power in the emperor’s hands. Under his weak successors, however, the eunuchs’ influence in politics proved a disaster.
Xianzong’s restoration of central authority involved more than military dominance. It was backed by a series of institutional measures designed to strengthen the power of the prefects and county magistrates, as against their provincial governors, by restoring to them the right of direct access to central government and giving them some measure of control over the military forces quartered within their jurisdiction. In an important financial reform, the provincial government no longer had first call on all the revenue of the province, as some revenue went directly to the capital. The government also began the policy, continued throughout the 9th and 10th centuries, of cutting down and fragmenting the provinces. It strengthened its control over the provincial administrations through a system of eunuch army supervisors, who were attached to the staff of each provincial governor. These eunuchs played an increasingly important role, not merely as sources of information and intelligence but as active agents of the emperor, able to intervene directly in local affairs.
The balance of power within the central government had also been considerably changed. The emperor Dezong had begun to delegate a great deal of business, in particular the drafting of edicts and legislation, to his personal secretariat, the Hanlin Academy. Although the members of the Hanlin Academy were handpicked members of the bureaucracy, their positions as academicians were outside the regular official establishment. This eventually placed the power of decision and the detailed formulation of policy in the hands of a group that depended entirely on the emperor, thus threatening the authority of the regularly constituted ministers of the court.
The influence of the eunuchs had also begun to be formalized and institutionalized in the palace council; this provided the emperor with another personal secretariat, which controlled the conduct of official business and had close links with the eunuchs’ command of the powerful palace armies. The eunuchs’ influence in politics steadily increased. Xianzong was murdered by some of his eunuch attendants, and henceforth the chief eunuchs of the palace council and the palace armies were a factor in nearly every succession to the Tang throne; in some cases they had their own candidates enthroned in defiance of the previous emperor’s will. The emperor Wenzong (reigned 827–840) sought to destroy the dominance of the eunuchs; his abortive schemes only demoralized the bureaucracy, particularly after the Sweet Dew (Ganlu) coup of 835, which misfired and led to the deaths of several ministers and a number of other officials. But the apogee of the eunuchs’ power was brief, ending with the accession of Wuzong in 840. Wuzong and his minister, Li Deyu, managed to impose some restrictions on the eunuchs’ power, especially in the military.
In the second half of the 9th century the central government became progressively weaker. During Yizong’s reign (859–873) there was a resurgence of the eunuchs’ power and a constant fratricidal strife between eunuchs and officials at court. From the 830s onward the first signs of unrest and banditry had appeared in the Huai valley and Henan, and trouble spread to the Yangtze valley and the south beginning in 856. Major uprisings were led by Kang Quantai in southern Anhui in 858 and Qiu Fu in Zhejiang in 859. The situation was complicated by a costly war against the Nanzhao kingdom on the borders of the Chinese protectorate in Annam, which later spread to Sichuan and dragged on from 858 until 866. After the invaders had been suppressed, part of the garrison force that had been sent to Lingnan mutinied and, under its leader, Pang Xun, fought and plundered its way back to Henan, where it caused widespread havoc in 868 and 869, cutting the canal linking the capital to the loyal Yangtze and Huai provinces. In 870 war broke out again with Nanzhao.
Yizong was succeeded by Xizong (reigned 873–888), a boy of 11 who was the choice of the palace eunuchs. Prior to his ascension, Henan had repeatedly suffered serious floods. In addition, a wave of peasant risings began in 874, following a terrible drought. The most formidable of them was led by Huang Chao, who in 878 marched south and sacked Guangzhou (Canton) and then marched to the north, where he took Luoyang in late 880 and Chang’an in 881. Although Huang Chao attempted to set up a regime in the capital, he proved cruel and inept. Hemmed in by loyal armies and provincial generals, in 883 he was forced to abandon Chang’an and withdraw to Henan and then to Shandong, where he died in 884. His forces were eventually defeated with the aid of Shatuo Turks, and the Tang court was left virtually powerless, its emperor a puppet manipulated by rival military leaders. The dynasty lingered on until 907, but the last quarter century was dominated by the generals and provincial warlords. With the progressive decline of the central government in the 880s and 890s, China fell apart into a number of virtually independent kingdoms. Unity was not restored until long after the Song dynasty was established.