Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms: Why 907 to 960 Was China's Most Chaotic Era

Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms: Why 907 to 960 Was China's Most Chaotic Era

When the warlord Zhu Wen forced the last Tang emperor to abdicate in 907, the dynasty that had ruled China for nearly three centuries finally collapsed. What followed was one of the most fractured periods in Chinese history. For roughly half a century the Central Plains saw five short-lived dynasties rise and fall in quick succession, while as many as ten regional kingdoms governed the south and west. Historians group these regimes under a single name, the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, and the label has become shorthand for political instability, frequent usurpation, and constant warfare. This article explains how the era began, who the major regimes were, why it was so unstable, and how the Song dynasty finally restored unity.

The Collapse of the Tang in 907

The Tang dynasty did not fall overnight. Its authority had been eroding since the An Lushan Rebellion in the mid-eighth century, after which power drifted steadily toward regional military governors known as jiedushi. By the late ninth century the throne controlled little beyond the capital region. The massive Huang Chao rebellion of the 870s and 880s shattered what remained of central control and sacked the capital at Chang'an.

Zhu Wen, originally a commander under Huang Chao, defected to the Tang and was rewarded with a powerful military governorship. Over the following years he accumulated land, troops, and influence until the emperor was effectively his puppet. In 907 he deposed Emperor Ai and declared a new dynasty, the Later Liang, with himself as emperor. The act formally ended the Tang and opened the period known as the Five Dynasties.

The Five Northern Dynasties in Succession

The "Five Dynasties" were five regimes that ruled the Central Plains around the Yellow River in turn between 907 and 960. None lasted long, and most fell to internal mutiny or to the next contender for power.

The Later Liang (907 to 923) was founded by Zhu Wen. He was murdered in 912 by one of his own sons, and the dynasty exhausted itself in succession struggles before being conquered.

The Later Tang (923 to 936) was established by Li Cunxu, a leader from the Shatuo, a Turkic people who had served the Tang. A gifted general, he destroyed the Later Liang but governed poorly once in power and was killed in a mutiny in 926. His successor Li Siyuan was a comparatively capable ruler, but the regime fell apart after his death.

The Later Jin (936 to 947) was founded by Shi Jingtang, who seized the throne with military help from the Khitan-led Liao state to the north. The price he paid for that help would shape Chinese geopolitics for centuries. The dynasty lasted only about a decade before the Liao invaded and toppled it.

The Later Han (947 to 951) was the shortest of all, lasting only a few years. Its founder Liu Zhiyuan died soon after taking power, and his successor alienated his own generals, one of whom overthrew the regime.

The Later Zhou (951 to 960) was the strongest and most reform-minded of the five. Under its second ruler, Chai Rong (also called Guo Rong), the state strengthened its army, reorganized the bureaucracy, and campaigned against rivals to the north and south. Chai Rong died in 959 while still in his thirties, leaving a child heir, and that succession crisis set the stage for the dynasty's replacement by the Song.

The Ten Kingdoms in the South

While the Central Plains cycled through dynasties, the southern and western regions were divided among a series of regional states. Tradition counts ten of them, though they did not all exist at the same time. Most were founded by late-Tang military governors or local strongmen who carved out independent territories as central authority dissolved.

The major kingdoms included the Former Shu and Later Shu in the Sichuan basin; Wu and its successor the Southern Tang in the lower Yangtze and Huai region; Wuyue in modern Zhejiang; Min in Fujian; Chu in Hunan; Southern Han in the far south around modern Guangdong; and Jingnan (also called Nanping), a small state near the middle Yangtze. The tenth, the Northern Han, was the exception to the southern pattern: it was based around Taiyuan in the north and survived as a Liao client state after the fall of the Later Han.

These kingdoms varied widely in size, wealth, and stability. Some were turbulent and short-lived, but several enjoyed relative peace precisely because they avoided the constant warfare of the Central Plains. The south generally suffered less destruction than the north during this era, which contributed to a longer-term shift of China's economic center toward the Yangtze valley.

Culture and Stability in the Southern States

Not every regime of this period was a story of pure chaos. Some southern courts became centers of culture and comparative prosperity.

The Southern Tang is the best remembered for its cultural achievements. Its last ruler, Li Yu, was a mediocre ruler but one of the most celebrated lyric poets in the Chinese language. After the Song conquered his state in 975, he was taken captive and died a few years later, and traditional accounts hold that he was poisoned on the orders of the Song court, though the precise circumstances are debated. His surviving poems, written largely in captivity and mourning his lost kingdom, are still widely read today.

Wuyue followed a markedly different strategy. Its rulers, beginning with its founder Qian Liu, deliberately avoided challenging the dominant power in the north. They acknowledged the Central Plains regimes, focused on internal development, built sea walls along the coast, and improved the area around West Lake near modern Hangzhou. In 978 the last Wuyue ruler peacefully surrendered his territory to the Song rather than fight, sparing his people a war of conquest and giving his state one of the more dignified endings of the era.

Constant Warfare and Short-Lived Regimes

The defining feature of the period was the speed with which regimes rose and collapsed. The five northern dynasties together lasted only about 53 years, an average of roughly a decade each, and several emperors reigned for only a year or two. Coups, assassinations, and mutinies were routine. Power flowed to whoever commanded the most loyal and capable army.

A saying attributed to a figure of the era captured the prevailing logic bluntly: the throne, it suggested, belonged to whoever had the strongest soldiers, with no fixed rule of succession. Whether or not the exact words are reliable, they reflect a real political reality. Imperial legitimacy, once treated as sacred and tied to heaven's mandate, had become something a general could simply seize by force.

One career illustrates the moral disorientation of the age better than any other. The official Feng Dao served a remarkable number of rulers across several of the successive dynasties, holding high office under each. Later Confucian historians condemned him harshly for serving so many masters, holding him up as an example of disloyalty. Yet he was also a competent administrator who is associated with sponsoring large-scale printing of the Confucian classics, helping preserve those texts. His career is often read as a symptom of an era in which the usual rules about loyalty had broken down, simply because emperors changed faster than anyone could remain loyal to a single one.

Why the Period Was So Chaotic

The instability of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms had deep structural roots rather than a single cause.

The most important was the legacy of late-Tang militarism. For more than a century before 907, regional military governors had commanded their own armies, collected their own revenue, and passed their commands to chosen successors. When the Tang finally fell, these governors were already functioning as semi-independent rulers, and the only real arbiter of power was military strength.

A second factor was the absence of a stable principle of succession. Because thrones were typically won by force, they could also be lost by force. Founders who seized power by coup had little ability to stop their own generals from doing the same to their heirs. The result was a self-perpetuating cycle of usurpation.

A third factor was external pressure from the north. The rising Liao state, led by the Khitan people, was a powerful military force that intervened directly in Central Plains politics, propping up some regimes and toppling others.

The Loss of the Sixteen Prefectures

One decision from this period had consequences that lasted far beyond it. In 936, Shi Jingtang sought Khitan military aid to win the throne and establish the Later Jin. In return, he ceded a strategic block of territory in the north known as the Sixteen Prefectures, covering areas around modern Beijing, Tianjin, and parts of northern Hebei and Shanxi.

This region included the mountain passes and defensive terrain that traditionally shielded the North China Plain from northern cavalry. Once it was in Liao hands, the plain lay largely open to attack. For centuries afterward, Central Plains dynasties tried and repeatedly failed to recover it. The early Song launched northern campaigns to reclaim the territory and suffered heavy defeats, including a major loss in 979. The prefectures would not return to a China-based dynasty until the founding of the Ming in the late fourteenth century, more than four hundred years later. The cession is therefore often singled out as one of the most consequential strategic mistakes of the era.

Reunification Under the Song

The cycle of chaos was finally broken from within the strongest of the five dynasties. In 960, with the Later Zhou throne held by a child, the army commander Zhao Kuangyin was leading troops north to meet a reported threat. At a place called Chenqiao, his soldiers proclaimed him emperor and draped him in the imperial yellow robe. He returned to the capital, accepted the throne, and founded the Song dynasty. The method was familiar: it closely resembled how the Later Zhou itself had been founded.

What set Zhao Kuangyin apart was what he did next. Understanding that the core problem of the age was generals with independent military power, he moved to bring that power under central control. According to a well-known account, he invited his leading generals to a banquet and persuaded them to give up their commands in exchange for wealth, honors, and comfortable retirement, an episode remembered as "releasing military power over cups of wine." The story may be stylized, but it reflects a real and deliberate policy.

The Song then pursued a consistent strategy of subordinating military authority to civil government, raising the status of scholar-officials and the examination system while keeping commanders on a tighter leash. Reunification itself took time. The Song absorbed the southern kingdoms over the following two decades, with the conquest of the Southern Tang in 975 and the peaceful surrender of Wuyue in 978. The northern holdout, the Northern Han, was finally conquered in 979, a date often taken to mark the effective end of the Ten Kingdoms and the reunification of the core of China.

The Song settlement came with its own long-term costs. By so firmly prioritizing civil control over military strength, later Song rulers left their dynasty militarily vulnerable to powerful northern states, a weakness that shaped Chinese history for generations. But it did end the relentless cycle of coups that had defined the Five Dynasties, and it restored a stable central order that had been missing since the fall of the Tang.

FAQ

Q1: What were the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms?

It was a period of Chinese history, roughly 907 to 960 in the north and extending to about 979 in the south, when the Central Plains was ruled by five short-lived dynasties in succession while the south and west were divided among about ten regional kingdoms. It followed the collapse of the Tang dynasty and ended with reunification under the Song.

Q2: What were the five dynasties, in order?

They were the Later Liang, Later Tang, Later Jin, Later Han, and Later Zhou. Each ruled the Central Plains in turn, and together they lasted only about 53 years, with most surviving only a decade or so.

Q3: Who ended the Tang dynasty?

The warlord Zhu Wen forced the last Tang emperor to abdicate in 907 and founded the Later Liang dynasty, formally ending the Tang and beginning the Five Dynasties period.

Q4: How did the period finally end?

Zhao Kuangyin, a general of the Later Zhou, took the throne in 960 and founded the Song dynasty. The Song then absorbed the southern kingdoms over the next two decades, with the last holdout, the Northern Han, conquered in 979, reunifying the core of China.

Q5: Why was the era considered so chaotic?

Power depended almost entirely on military force, there was no stable rule of succession, and regimes were repeatedly overthrown by coups and mutinies. The legacy of independent late-Tang military governors and pressure from the northern Liao state made stable central rule nearly impossible until the Song restored it.