Power and Politics in Tenth-Century China: The Former Shu Regime ...

the period, epitomized by the Kitan (Liao), also powerfully shaped the politics of the day.²⁸ In contrast, Jingnan, one of the “Ten States,” was much smaller and weaker, and its rulers never claimed to be emperors as did those of some the independent northern powers mentioned above.²⁹ Obviously, the criteria for the classification of the “states,” even in the writings of Song historians, were neither consistent nor convincing; they cannot explain why some regimes should be regarded as “guo” but the others should not.³⁰ Unfortunately, the Song categorization of the tenth-century polities has continued to be used by most later historians.³¹ Just as Qing historian Wu Renchen (?–1689) once defended his adherence to the Song category in the preface to his famous work, Spring and Autumn of the Ten States (Shiguo chunqiu ), “Historians usually abide by the earlier writings and follow the old pattern of the ‘Hereditary Houses of the Ten States’” ().³²

Clearly, the traditional dynasties-centered paradigm and the old category of “Wudai shiguo” serve to downplay the role of the non-Central-Plain powers and provide an imprecise description of the political changes and interstate relations of the day. Without considering the southern states and those ignored “regional regimes,” one cannot explain the complex power relations involved nor gain a holistic picture of the Five Dynasties period,especially its early days, in which the national politics involved political forces outside the group of the “Wudai shiguo.” By adopting the term “regional regimes” in this work, I hope to transcend the unfairly fixed boundaries of “dynasties” and “states” set by the dominant Song narrative and reevaluate the significance of some historiographically marginalized powers in shaping the national politics of the tenth century, without overlooking the great variation among the regimes of the time. Thus, in this work the term “regional regime” will apply to all of the autonomous powers that exercised reasonably effective control over domains with relatively stable boundaries for an observable time period, such as the Qi, with which the Former Shu dealt from the 890s to the 920s. I suggest that a widely maintained balance of power existed across China for most of the Five Dynasties period,