Reform of the examination

The Taizu emperor’s policies were clearly directed toward the creation of a bureaucracy based on demonstrated abilities rather than birth or favour. This is evident in his steps to strengthen the examination system. By 963 he had forbidden court officials to recommend candidates and had forbidden graduates to consider examiners their patrons. He ordered reexaminations on the petition of a rejected candidate or on even a hint of favour in the selection of graduates. By 973 he had established the final examination in the imperial palace to verify the rankings and had ordered the list of successful competitors to be announced publicly. He began to award larger numbers of degrees.

A mildness and humanitarian tone pervade Taizu’s policies, which on the whole conform to the Confucian ethos. He extended clemency toward defeated opponents rather consistently. He showed concern for the adherents of the dynasty he displaced. His generals were repeatedly admonished to shun avoidable harm to the citizens of places they occupied and even to spare captured soldiers and leaders; among the latter was the poet-prince Li Yu. His own ministers who lost his favour were treated well. In his legal reforms, though he dealt more severely with corruption and irresponsibility of officials in several measures, he lightened the punishments for violations of the state controls over salt and wine and required a review of all capital sentences by the high court at the capital. His early measures also show a special concern with improving the economic lot of the poorer citizens and easing their burdens of taxation.

The legacy of Taizu

In his 16-year reign, the Taizu emperor laid the foundations for the essential political institutions of a remarkable epoch. The political order of his dynasty combined to a surpassing degree freedom of discussion, innovation in bureaucratic methods, internal reform, peace, and stability. This atmosphere undoubtedly facilitated the pioneering in economic techniques, scientific advances, and achievements in philosophy, art, and literature that distinguished the Song period.

When Taizu died, the construction of the new state was far from finished. The ensuing peace and prosperity would also bring new problems calling for new solutions. Of the succeeding emperors, none quite matched him in stature or in character. But Confucian ancestral piety reinforced the attraction of his proven policies. The traditions of his active concern in administration and of close association with the bureaucracy’s leaders persisted in greater or lesser degree among later Song rulers. Subsequent developments on the whole moved in directions indicated by Taizu. Their benefits were scarcely unadulterated; safeguards against the ambitions of military commanders, for example, perhaps hampered Song armies in meeting powerful foreign invaders. Still, the efforts of his successors to further popular welfare, to find and train the best talent for the civil service, and to defend the state’s stability and the unbroken rule of the dynasty for three centuries (though only in South China from 1127) no doubt owe much to Taizu’s concepts of statecraft.