The major concerns of the Northern Song literati and the Southern Song literati were quite different, for the problems that the Northern Song faced during the period between 960 and 1126 C.E. pertained to “domestic” affairs, whereas during the Southern Song period between 1127 and 1276 the literati faced problems on a more “international” scale. Yet within this civil bureaucracy, in which the literati often freely debated among themselves, factionalism emerged as a “byproduct” that defined the Song dynasty. Although both the Northern and Southern Song administrations had similar social, economic, and political uncertainties, the problems that emerged over these three centuries proved to be quite different in scope.

Because the Song founder Zhao Guanyin established the empire as a civil bureaucracy rather than a military state, the main route to attaining power was through passing the civil service examinations and becoming apart of the literati. Yet during the Song’s first one hundred years of existence, the scholar-officials comprised only of one hundred powerful families (Hansen, 267). Since this ruling clique wanted to maintain their influence in government, it formed cartels. In inter-marrying among themselves, sons of these families automatically assumed “shadow” privileges in which they sat in easier examinations. Tragically, the examination system became so corrupt that “ shadow” examinees often had a fifty percent pass rate compared to the rest of the open examinations (Hansen, 267).

This established hierarchy often refused to accept “outsiders” that did not originate from these hundred or so prominent families. As a result, such tensions in early Song China between these two factions became one of the major concerns of the literati.

Wang Anshi, an outsider from Sichuan, emerged in 1058 as one of the most influential and radical reformers to oppose the bureaucratic families. He not only wanted to reform the corrupt civil examination system, he sought to overhaul the educational system by introducing his own curriculum. In his “Ten Thousand Word Memorial” to Emperor Renzong in 1058, Wang proposes to break the consortium of these families, arguing that selection of officials should be based on personal talent rather than heredity favoritism. Hence, he opposes the existing social hierarchy, for he favours a more fluid social system in which all “capable men” such as him are free to climb the social ladder to prominence (Wang, 615).

Wang not only attacks this monopoly of power, he also criticizes the existing Confucian curriculum. In the same memorial, he stresses that the “extensive memorization and strenuous study” in the civil service examination system is inadequate to the to training and recruitment of capable administrators, for most examinees have no practical skills such as archery or horseback riding so essential for warfare (Wang, 615). He also asserts that the civil service examinations are flawed, for they reward only those who can memorize and recite of the classics, but overlooks those who can actually apply their knowledge of the classics to the administration of the empire (Wang, 616).

However, the chief issue that divided the literati in the Northern Song government pertained to economic issues. By the time of the death of Emperor Renzong in 1068, defense expenditures against Northern invaders, indemnity charges to the Khitans and Tanguts, and a rapidly growing economy resulted in an unstable currency (Hansen, 269). Consequently, two factions emerged with vastly different views on solving the fiscal crisis. The historicists, led by Sima Guang, advocated incremental reforms, while the classicists led by Wang Anshi favoured radical reforms. When Renzong’s successor, Shenzong, came to the throne in 1068, Wang Anshi and the classicists eventually gained greater influence in government. More significantly, politics shifted from cordial disagreement to vicious factionalism (Hansen, 268).

In particular, Wang instituted his New Policies, a series of strategies that saw money as the solution to the fiscal crisis. He believed that the state had the duty to accelerate economic development, and then reap from the increased prosperity through taxes; in contrast, Sima and the historicists wanted to regulate the government’s economic activities, for they were skeptical that money economy could grow any further (Hansen, 270). When Wang assumed influence in 1068, his Green Sprout Reforms attempted to relieve the peasants’ cycle of debt by instituting ever-level granaries which were used to loan grain to cultivators, and only to be repaid after harvests. Although the intentions were benign, the effects resulted in quite the opposite as most farmers remained poor and debt-ridden.

Regardless, both sides used Confucianism as the base of their arguments. In “A Letter From Sima Guang to Wang Anshi,” Sima asserts that Wang’s policies are unjustified because Wang strayed away from moral principles, and instead sought to increase the state revenues through taxation and ever-level granaries for “profit” (Sima, 153). Wang counters in “Wang Anshi’s Letter of Reply to Sima Guang” by asserting that Confucian scholars are unrealistic when they argue for the policy of “doing nothing and merely preserving the old ways” (Wang, 154). Instead, his policies favoured a more legalist approach that elevated the stability of the state above the peoples’ interests.

After Emperor Shenzong’s death in 1086, Sima Guang and the historicists secured influence over governmental affairs, and quickly reversed most of Wang’s policies. As Sima argues in his “A Petition to Do Away With the Most Harmful of the New Laws,” since Wang Anshi’s “crop loans, local service exemption, marketing controls, credit and loan system, and other measures” all failed to improve the people’s lives, they should be replaced with his own revised policies (Sima, 625). Such “shifts” and “countershifts” only exacerbated factionalism within the government (Hansen, 272). While the historicists appointed historicist officials when they were in power, the classicists likewise allied exclusively with other classicists.

With the bulk of the literati’s focus on domestic squabbles, lesser attention was paid to foreign affairs, particularly the encroachment of the Khitans and Tanguts on Chinese territory. As far back as 1038, the Tangut leader Weiming Yuanhao desired for equal status to the Song emperor, for in his “Letter to the Song Emperor Renzong” Weiming asks for recognition from the Song as “ruler facing south” (Weiming, 140). Instead of waging war, the government preferred to appease their aggressors with peace treaties and reparation payments. Yet it was under the rule of Emperor Huizong that the Chinese and the literati underrated their Northern rivals, namely the Jurchens (Hansen, 276). Instead of devoting his efforts on resisting the Northern aggressors, Huizong spent his time painting and collecting calligraphy, leaving the literati to continue bickering among themselves over domestic issues.

It was not until after the Jin empire conquered Northern China in 1127 that the focus of the literati in the Southern Song Dynasty shifted from domestic to international relations. Much of the social, political, and economic issues were one way or another related to the loss of the North to the Jurchens. In particular, the question of whether to sue for peace or continue war with the Jin predominantly shaped twelfth-century politics, and replaced the eleventh-century issue of monetary and social matters (Hansen, 319).

After 1127, the Southern Song officials subsequently split into a war hawk faction that favoured the recovery of the North through continuous warfare, and a dove faction, which advocated peace with the Jurchens. Because the peace faction eventually won the argument when the Song government signed a peace treaty in 1141 with the Jurchens (officially recognizing the Jin state as its superior), the literati became even more divided. The fact that the Song became a subject state to the “superior” Jin state became the crux of the disagreement between the hawks and doves.

Literature was one avenue where many vented their frustration. One war hawk, Yue Fei (allegedly) laments in “Full River Red” that he has not forgotten the “humiliation of the Jingkang period” in which the Song were driven South by the Jurchen invaders; hence, he yearns to win back the North and “recover our mountains and rivers” (Fei, 170). The female poet Li Qingchao also grieves the lost of the North in “Butterflies Love Flowers,” for she often “dreams of the capital and see the road back to it” (Li, 169).

Subsequently, the social order of the South denigrated into chaos. The massive migration of refugees from the North to the South produced a great deal of social mayhem. In addition, the high density of people living in the small vicinity around Hangzhou and the rapidly growing commercial economy culminated into further social problems. One particular result of this disorder was the rupture of familial relations (Hansen, 281). Yuan Cai’s writings are testimony to this chaos, for his Precepts for Social Life is a manual written in 1179 particularly prescribed for the literati and wealthy families. Yuan’s “Getting Along with Relatives” in Chapter 1 particularly emphasizes the importance of the Confucian order, particularly the bonds among siblings, parents and children, husband and wife, relatives, neighbours, and friends. For example, he prescribes the solution for harmony in a household between father and son when he suggests that “those in our society who are good at being sons generally prove to be good fathers, and those who were not able to be filial to their parents tend to be cruel to their sons” (Yuan, 183).

The monopoly of power that the Northern families once held before contracted considerably after 1127. Years of factional infighting resulted in the shrinkage of the literati class, for the classicists banned the sons of the historicists from the government, while the historicists did the same when they were in power (Hansen, 293). At the same time, because of the increasing population, the number of examinees amplified; after 1200, more than three hundred men competed for one seat in some areas (Hansen, 295). Since the literati’s sons could no longer rely on passing the civil service examinations as their main avenue for wealth and power, it became a subject that caused great concern within the literati community. Hence, Yuan Cai’s Precepts for Social Life was also used to alleviate the literati’s tensions, for it advises their sons to look to other occupations in tutoring, trade, medicine, and farming, occupations once considered modest in pre-1127 China (Hansen, 294).

Many of the disillusioned literati in fact shunned governmental affairs altogether and instead turned to local society. One particular scholar, Zhu Xi, initiated a new school of Neo-Confucianism which stressed that the purpose of an education was moral self-cultivation, not the pursuit of government positions. The setting up private academies such as Zhu Xi’s White Deer Academy and setting up local granaries to distribute grain to the poorer peasants revealed that some of the literati were revolted by government institutions, a sharp break from the pre-1127 Northern Song mentality (Hansen, 296).

Hence, the major concerns of the Northern Song literati and the Southern Song literati were quite different in the three hundred years of existence of the Song state. The problems that the Northern Song faced during the period between 960 and 1126 C.E. pertained to “internal” affairs, but in Southern Song, the literati faced problems more “external” in range within the period 1127 to 1276 C.E. Though both dynasties had similar social, economic, and political uncertainties, the latter Southern Song faced issues that were mostly concerned with recovery of the Northern territory.