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

world. The glory of the past Tang dynasty, especially its foregone central authority, still inspired the rulers of Five Dynasties for their own purposes. Remarkably, most of them insisted on proclaiming their “loyalty” to the past Tang court, attempting to utilize the Tang cause to legitimize their own authority within their limited domains and to place themselves in more righteous positions when contending with rivals. Even the idea of Tang unity, though remembered as a bygone reality, was still cited frequently in the imperial rhetoric of some regional “empires” for the same purpose of legitimation. Thus, in the shadow of the Tang, the rulers of the tenth century, especially self-proclaimed emperors, had to wrest meaning from the conflict between what was and what should have been to create a new world that creatively reconciled the past with the present. This Tang influence on the Former Shu can be found in the historical background of the Shu region, covered in chapter 1; the rise of Wang Jian from a lower-ranking officer in the Tang army to a military governor in the late ninth century, illustrated in chapter 2; and his efforts to legitimize his imperial dominance in Shu discussed in chapter 5.

In a turbulent era like the Five Dynasties, in which multiple regimes founded by martial men competed fiercely with one another, the military constituted at least one ultimate basis of power. Without exception, all of the founding rulers of the regional regimes in the tenth century rose to power by military means, either as soldiers in official armies of the Tang or as members of successful gangs.⁴⁹ An indispensable element in the formation and existence of a regional regime, military power not only decided whether a polity could survive the fierce annexations by warlords in the last years of the Tang but also functioned to create and maintain (or shatter) the balance of power on which the regime depended to coexist with its rivals. Obviously, only by building an effective army to defend its borders could a regime gain advantage of dealing with its neighbors in a more flexible way. The sword was, of course, not the only means adopted by the rulers of the day, who were even keener to employ diplomatic tactics to maintain balanced power relations and maximize profit. In this work, the significance of the military in the founding of the Former Shu and its successes in dealing with neighboring rivals is