Chapter 9 Chapter 6 Disintegration and Integration Southern and Northern Dynasties

During the Southern and Northern Dynasties, China was in a state of division, and the original government structure had completely collapsed. Therefore, no matter in the north or the south, a new government structure and a new state machine had to be rebuilt.If you look at a company, the company has disintegrated. Although everyone's memory of the company still exists, a complete structure must be re-established.In the south, there have been many local forces since Soochow. These local forces exist in the form of big clans, controlling large tracts of land and considerable labor, and even local governments have to bow to them.The local government still had some functions during the Western Jin Dynasty; after the collapse of the Western Jin Dynasty, it could not control it at all, so the south returned to the form where the rich clan controlled resources.Using the company as an analogy, after the company collapsed, some branches and some distributors seek development in the original market.Without a central governing body, they now have to sort out order on what would have been a regional network, as is the case in the South.This kind of sorting is actually quite difficult, because in addition to the local big families in the south, there are now a large number of descendants of the Western Jin royal family who fled from the north; when these nobles fled, they were also descendants of big families.Among these fleeing refugees, there is also a relationship between superiors and subordinates, masters and servants.The refugees became the population controlled by the big clan themselves, and even their own private soldiers.In this situation, it seems that some of the senior staff of the northern company fled to the newly opened south with their subordinates, and wanted to combine with the remaining local companies to form the structure of the southern company.These two forces must not only coexist, but also effectively perform management functions after being combined.

This work was carried out by Director Wang.The economic power of the big clans from the north and the south could not compete with the local big clans in the Jiangnan region, so they went further afield to develop new areas in today's Jiangsu, Zhejiang and even Fujian.Hunan, Jiangxi, and Guangdong all had their own local leaders, so the orders of the central government of the Southern Dynasties could not be implemented, and the big clans had to change hands in the middle.The big clan itself collects local taxes, enjoys most of them, and gives a small part to the central government.If they are unwilling, the central government has nothing to do.On the one hand, the central government must maintain a group of troops in the Huaihe River Basin and on the Yangtze River to defend against the southern invasion of the Hu people in the north. On the other hand, it must maintain the immigrants and their descendants who came down from the north.It is not an easy task for the government to compete for resources and maintain harmony.Taking a company as an example, it is the problem of coordination between veteran cadres and local cadres after the dissolution of a large company.

Director Wang's method is to elect some local cadres to the central government to participate in the central decision-making, and also insert some veteran central cadres to the localities to organize some small distributors, so that they can maintain their original power. It is an opportunity to maintain the original survival.Such a structure is quite loose. Director Wang's intention is to minimize interference with the original local forces. He tries not to make the original forces feel threatened, but he cannot completely avoid conflicts.After the Eastern Jin Dynasty crossed the South, there were several serious conflicts.The central forces in the south are threatened by local forces and the local forces are also divided by the center. This situation makes conflicts continue to arise.The southern forces felt oppressed by the northerners, and this unbalanced mentality could not be resolved for a long time throughout the Southern Dynasties.Director Wang's approach is to maintain a stable state as much as possible, maintain the original authority of the southern forces, and only insert northern forces in the gaps; the central government must tolerate the intervention of the southern forces to form a co-governance situation.

From the company's point of view, these small distributors have considerable power and undertake part of the production work, and part of the profits they get are contributed to the head office to obtain legal agency rights.The original small branch companies, that is, the local governments in the Western Jin Dynasty, actually existed in name only.Without the support of the big clan, these local governments would not be able to operate.That's why I use the metaphor of small distributors, because they themselves become small producers.These loose structures are very similar to Zhuge Liang's operations in Sichuan and Nanzhong as we mentioned earlier, except that the Shu Han lasted a relatively short period of time, while the Southern Dynasty lasted longer.

The royal Sima clan of the Southern and Eastern Jin Dynasties and their successors—Song, Qi, Liang, and Chen—basically achieved a harmonious relationship with the local big clans through the exchange of interests.On the one hand, Wang and Xie in the north maintained their own unity, and also maintained a good relationship with the local big family through marriage.This is a way of both struggle and unity, which mostly uses power tactics and does not really achieve harmonious reorganization.Another problem is that the population in the north often becomes a small independent regime in the south, which exists in the form of overseas Chinese counties and overseas Chinese counties, and is not combined with the local household registration. It was not until the Song Dynasty that the land was broken (that is, it was changed to a general local administrative system) Integrate the population from the south.

After the land break, in theory, people from the south and people from the north are mixed, and all distributors are under one network, and they also serve as government distributors and do distribution work.But after Liu Song, new powers rose again, and they were the local tyrants in the newly developed areas of Hunan, Jiangxi, and Guangdong.These forces each occupy a place and control a group of people. Their relationship with the central government is worse than that of the Jiangnan clan and the northern clan.This part of the integration has been unsuccessful throughout the Southern Dynasties.The government in Jiangnan was basically a disorganized situation, and the southern government did not succeed in establishing dominion.The history of the Southern Dynasties is like the rise and fall of branch companies.The branch company grew up, came in to seize the title of the head office, and became the emperor of the Southern Dynasty, but the structure of the head office has never been integrated.The resources of Southern Company are limited, and the tasks that can be done are naturally limited.If it takes maintaining stability and prosperity in the south as its goal, it will spend less on the defense of the north. It only relies on two self-sufficient armed forces in two pivotal areas: the north of the Yangtze River and the middle reaches of the Yangtze River. The manner in which these two regions were maintained was highly militarized, separating the South from the North.Later, the Southern Dynasties had no way to resist the aggression of the Northern Dynasties, and the territory of each dynasty became smaller and smaller.The south has always been unstable and there have been civil strife. The reason is that the integration process was not good and an effective center could not be established.

The situation is different in the north, where the process of integration is rather slow.But after integration again and again, it was finally successful.After the Western Jin Dynasty, the situation in the north was also that many local clans organized their own armed forces.The rich family lived in Wubao, mastered the local population, and established a small government by themselves, maintaining the stability and prosperity of a small local situation. At that time, there were many different foreign races in the north, and they established short-lived regimes in various places in the form of tribal soldiers.Basically, these regimes did not effectively control the Central Plains, because the purpose of these tribal soldiers was to plunder, and they did not have the mentality to establish a long-term management system.Five Hu and sixteen countries, the life span of most countries is quite short.The regimes established by these Hu people often maintained a dual-track structure. On the one hand, the monarchs were called Shanyu, and managed their own tribal soldiers; on the other hand, they called themselves emperors of China, and managed China's population.Although they governed only a small part of the land and for a short period of time, they still called themselves the central government.In fact, this kind of government order cannot go deep into the local area, and make the big clan obey their orders through the area of ​​the big clan.

Among the Five Hu, the first effective regime was Fu Jian of the former Qin Dynasty.Fu Jian appointed Wang Meng to govern the country and established a very successful system.From the perspective of the regime of the former Qin Dynasty, it can be said that a company that has been dispersed has organized distributors in various places into an operational enterprise.At that time, the big clans in the north had much more effective organizational structure and the ability to control local resources than the big clans in the south.They have the function of defense, and they can also organize and mobilize the masses to engage in production.Basically, every big clan must be able to do this in the area it manages, otherwise it cannot exist.Although they do not have the legal right to collect taxes, because the place is small, it is quite effective to mobilize local resources, regardless of manpower and material resources.Therefore, the problem for the northern government is how to combine these scattered powers with the central government.If we take a company as an analogy, after seizing some equity by coercive means in the stock market, we must force a small company with outdated products, few employees, and insufficient funds to re-merge with a distributor of a rather large company. Organized into a new company.This new company must be the successor of the original company in name, so it is inevitable that in addition to obtaining legitimacy, it must also restore part of the structure of the previous large company.And these jobs are exactly what Wang Meng wants to try.

The work Wang Meng is doing is two-track. On the one hand, he must suppress some tribal nobles in the former Qin Dynasty, so that they will no longer plunder willfully and develop power outside the system.In other words, he wants to use Chinese systems and laws to restrain the power of the original tribes.If the above example is used to illustrate that a small company annexes scattered parts of a large company, some of the original cadres and shareholders in the small company may not be qualified for the work of the large company.In the new company, the boss needs to restore the structure of the head office, and other cadres or shareholders of the original small company are not allowed to arbitrarily seize or divide the resources that the head office can control, and they are not allowed to arbitrarily expand their power.Wang Meng's control over the Hu nobles was quite strict.Fu Jian, the former king of the Qin Dynasty, cooperated closely with Wang Meng, over a period of more than ten years, subdued the arrogance of the tribal nobles, and made them more or less on the normal track.On the other hand, Wang Meng also wanted to extend the power of the central government to the area controlled by the big clan behind Wubao.But this work was not really done during his lifetime. All he could do was to select talented Han Chinese to serve as cadres in the central government.When he was selected, he didn't consider his origin, nor did he consider whether he had any relationship with the big clan.Wang Meng himself was born poor, and made a living by weaving dustpans when he was young; he is self-taught, and he also understands that with his status and status, he cannot beat people from local aristocratic families.He tried his best to recruit talents as cadres, rebuild the authority of the law, and implement his policies.Select some cadres who are familiar with the Han, Wei, and Jin government systems, and restore the original management organization as much as possible.Because these people are capable and honest, they established the prestige of the former Qin government and played a considerable role in governing.But in this case, the integration is probably just coexistence with the big clan.The great clans could accept the former Qin government, but they would not completely give up their power; and the former Qin government could not systematically absorb the great clans.In other words, the distributors recognized their status as distributors, but they did not enter the decision-making level of the new company on a large scale;

This way of integrating Fang Wu is very different from Wang Dao and Zhuge Liang's way of integrating their regions.Wang Meng wants to re-establish a management unit on the basis of a very unbalanced power structure.During Wang Meng's 16 years in power, considerable achievements were made, and Fu Jian also trusted him quite a lot.But he could not completely unify the North after all.Although many different tribes accepted Fu Jian's regime for a while, the north was still basically scattered.After Wang Meng's death, the regime collapsed, and the north fell into tribal disputes again.Fu Jian's efforts to attack the south were also unsuccessful. After the defeat in the Battle of Feishui, Fu Jian's million-strong army collapsed, and the regime of the former Qin Dynasty also collapsed.