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

to coexist as “emperor” and share the Mandate of Heaven bequeathed by the former Tang.

A “balance of power system” was widely distributed and constituted one of the defining characteristics of the geopolitics in most parts of China during the first half of the tenth century, when there did not exist a dominant power capable of unifying China.³⁴ In the early period, the long lasting confrontation between the Later Liang, based in Henan, and the Jin, based in Shanxi, played a crucial part in shaping contemporary power relations in North China, which not only involved smaller regimes in Hebei and northwestern China but also provided an advantageous environment for the survival of some southern regimes. The Former Shu, the subject of this study, took advantage of the situation to forge a balance in the southeast between itself and three of its neighbors, the Qi, Liang, and Jingnan. A similar balance of power existed in southeastern China around the same time between the Liang, Wu, Chu, Min, and Wu Yue, and continued to function even after the Liang and Wu were replaced by their successors.³⁵ Even in the late Five Dynasties, when the Later Zhou emerged as an unchallengeable power in China proper and seized the Huainan region from the Southern Tang, a temporary balance between the two powers was still observable along the Yangzi River, their new boundary line.³⁶ If the regional regimes are placed in a larger geographic context, a grand balance of power can also be observed between the Kitan (Liao) and the Central-Plain dynasties, and between each of the latter and all its contemporary southern rivals as a whole. In these circumstances, despite the varied strengths of individual regimes, each power periodically constituted a more or less indispensable part of the system of balance on either the national or regional scale. A change in the situation, such as a military conquest or a shift of political alliance, would alter the system and consequently bring serious changes through a series of chain reactions.

Under the balance of power of the Five Dynasties, most regional regimes adopted markedly practical strategies in dealing with different political rivals based on a careful calculation of their own strengths and surrounding power dynamics. Taking self-preservation as their primary