Sherry Lin

History of China I
Research Paper

The Causes of the An Lushan Rebellion

The An Lushan Rebellion, 755 – 763, was a military uprising led by a rebel general against
the Tang central government and marks one of the major turning points in Tang Dynasty history.
An Lushan was a Sogdian-Turkish general who was able to capitalize upon his successful
neutralization of the northern frontier threats to steadily climb the military ranks and win
imperial court favor. During the years of An’s ascent to personal power, the Imperial court was
run by the imperial minister Li Linfu, a capable administrator whose unchecked power while in
office left a dangerous power vacuum after his death in 752. The ensuing power struggles
between An and several others to fill the political vacuum eventually left An feeling cornered
into rebelling in order to save his political career, as well as his own life. The volatile
combination of rising frontier militarism, in conjunction with a central government weakened by
the collapse of Li’s unchecked power in 752, form the main underlying factors of the An Lushan
rebellion. While the increasing power of the frontier military provided An with the institutional
means to rise to personal power, the political instability created by the power vacuum following
Li’s death was the immediate catalyst that drove An to seize total government control.
The rise of new frontier military threats during the early 8th century required the Tang
government to make substantial institutional changes to ensure China’s border security, and An
successfully maneuvered within this new institutional framework to rise to personal power. The
Tang government’s shift from a centralized to decentralized military organizational system
evolved as a response to new types of organized and highly-mobile nomadic threats that arose in
the 8th century. Whereas before the 8th century, the Tang government relied upon an informal
Fuping militia system that was effective only for short conflicts, the rise of powerful, longer-term
nomadic threats on the Northern and Western frontiers after the 8th century forced the
government to quickly readjust both its military structure and allocation of institutional power.
For example, the protracted length of the conflicts with the Khitan, Xi and Tibetan nomads
necessitated the creation of large, standing armies on the frontiers of up to half-a-million troops
that soon required the leadership of military governors. In reorganizing border defense under
such governors, the central government inevitably ceded a significant portion of its military and
civil authority, including powers of finance and taxation, to these individuals. This transfer of
imperial control over local affairs to the military governors explains how “the frontier was
gradually strengthened at the expense of the central government,” to the point where the
defensively-created armies soon acquired dangerous offensive capacities. Furthermore, although
these frontier armies were “highly effective for controlling foreign enemies,” they could also be
directed inwards towards the state itself in the absence of foreign threats. Thus, the creation of
military governorships as a response to nomadic frontier threats reflects an institutional shift
away from concentrated central power and towards an effective, but potentially disloyal
decentralized military organization centered around military governors.
The prestige, professionalism and hierarchical structure of the new frontier armies under
the military governorship system provided outsiders like An with a legitimate avenue to rise to
political power. Before the establishment of the military governorship system, hereditary right
and the exam system were the only two methods for attaining government positions. Both of
these avenues to political power restricted large segments of the population from government
service, as those lacking in money, education or connections were automatically disqualified
from contention. Later, the rise of the military governorship system in the 8th century vastly
equalized the availability of government service opportunities by creating a military hierarchy on
the frontier that paralleled the bureaucratic hierarchy of the central government. For instance,
whereas connections and intellectual merit determined promotion under the government
bureaucracy, military skill and success now determined promotion under the frontier military
system. This development shows how the frontier armies created invaluable opportunities for
those lacking the traditional means to success, as military advancement had fewer qualification
barriers than advancement by intellectual or hereditary merit.
As repelling the nomadic invaders became increasingly challenging, the stature and prestige
of the frontier armies rose accordingly, and promotion through the frontier military hierarchy
became a viable way to attain political appointments within the imperial court. An Lushan, for
example, was able to use his military successes as a stepping stone for acquiring important
political posts. An began as simple soldier in the Chinese army, but his military merits ensured
steady promotions that eventually earned him governorships of the powerful Pinglu and Fanyang
military commands in the Northeast by 744. His success in particular in pacifying the Khitan and
Xi nomads soon led to several important civil service appointments, including “civil inspector of
Hebei” and “honorary president of the censorate,” in addition to his military responsibilities of
over 200,000 troops. An’s attainment of these high-ranking military and civil service positions,
despite his background of limited means, reflects the political fluidity and mobility enabled by
the military governorship system. Therefore, the creation of military governorships equalized the
availability of government service opportunities, and provided An with an institutionalized
means to attain personal power.
Coinciding with the rise in frontier military power was a corresponding fall in central
government authority that stemmed from the consequences of imperial minister Li Linfu’s
unchecked power. Li had originally been a successful administrator, but the alarming scope of
his power soon spawned bitter internal factionalism that severely weakened the central
bureaucracy before its partial collapse following Li’s death in 752. In the early part of his career,
Li’s ambitions were kept firmly in check by his rival minister in the censorate, Chang Qiuling,
with Li representing bureaucratic efficiency and Chang championing scholarly Confucian
orthodoxy. After years of rivalry, Li successfully forced Chang from power, and began
consolidating his military and financial power in order to implement his reforms. For instance, Li
successfully gained control over the frontier armies by establishing the precedent for promoting
frontier officers to political positions, a shrewd move that kept handpicked generals like An
Lushan personally beholden to Li, as they owed their political position to Li’s sponsorship. This
policy eliminated the critical separation between political and military power, since the
appointed generals never relinquished their military power, and effectively weakened the
government’s ability to self-regulate. Whereas military and political power traditionally served to
counterbalance one another, Li’s melding of the two sides enabled a dangerous amount of power
to quickly accumulate in the hands of very few. Likewise, Li also co-opted the power of the
finance ministers by manipulating their selection to the ministry, which rendered the finance
ministers beholden to Li’s sponsorship as well. Both these examples show how, by controlling
both the government’s military and political authority, Li was thereby able to control virtually all
other aspects of government, ranging from the minutiae of local appointments to longer-term
policy aims.
 Although Li successfully implemented many beneficial reforms during his tenure as chief
minister, members of the inner court became increasingly alarmed by the extent of his power,
and sought to challenge him. Li retaliated by spending the next ten years until his death in 752
methodically purging all potential challengers to his authority. He either killed off or removed
from office a majority of competent officials, and instead installed unqualified but seemingly
loyal officials who ruined the credibility of the bureaucracy with their corruption, like Wang
Hung, the self-enriching finance minister. Thus, Li’s career trajectory captures how, despite his
well-intentioned and generally successful reforms, his means for achieving these policies had
destabilizing consequences for the central government. Li’s unchecked power consolidation after
Chang’s death essentially put the central government at his whim, and subsequent challenges to
his stranglehold on power resulted in bitter infighting that seriously damaged the credibility of
the central government. Most importantly, while Li’s attempts to silence his challengers
damaged the bureaucracy he had worked so hard to strengthen, his death left a truly dangerous
power vacuum: as the “linchpin” of the central government, Li had no other replacement with the
ability to keep the central government together. Therefore, while Li’s unchecked rise to power
enabled the implementation of beneficial reforms in the short-run, it also unintentionally resulted
in damaging infighting and a gaping power vacuum that all proved to be destabilizing to the
central government in the long-run.
The dangerous combination of rising military power on the frontier and a political power
vacuum at the center created the volatile conditions behind An’s revolt. In the wake of the
political vacuum created by Li’s death, An and Li’s successor to the chief ministry, Yang
Guozhong, became the two top contenders for political power. Where An had overwhelmingly
superior military power, Yang had infinitely better political connections as the relative of the
Emperor’s favorite consort. Both tried to outmaneuver the other to make up for their respective
weaknesses, with Yang attempting to gain control of a military governorship in Sichuan, and An
making increased court appearances to curry political favor. When Yang realized he could not
possibly match An’s military strength as the most powerful of the military governors, he
instigated a political witch hunt against An, and aggressively sought to discredit the general’s
loyalty while ostracizing and punishing his followers at court. By early 755, An was too afraid to
even set foot in the imperial court for fear of arrest and torture, and became convinced that he
had completely lost the emperor’s support. Feeling politically cornered and certain that his
disgrace was imminent, An finally decided to turn his troops against the state in the spring of 755
in what felt like his only option out of the situation. This sequence of events demonstrates how
An’s decision to rebel came down to two simple factors: he was politically cornered by Yang,
but had the military means to fight his way out of it. Some commentators argue that An had
plotted all along to usurp power. The events leading up to the rebellion, however, show that it
was borne of specific political circumstances at a specific time when the center was crippled by a
political vacuum and the frontier was militarily strong. Thus, rather than being a calculated and
pre-meditated decision, An’s impetus to rebel was truly a product of purely political conflict set
within the opportune military conditions.
The An Lushan Rebellion stands as one of the defining events in Tang Dynasty, and indeed,
of all of Chinese history. While the rebellion itself was the unfortunate product of an unstable
political power vacuum combined with a strong frontier military, the effects of the rebellion are
far more profound. The rebellion completely crippled and devastated a once-powerful state, and
directly led to the decentralized and chaotic political order of its aftermath. Even though the
Tang government was able to regain some measure of its former authority, the dynasty never
fully recovered from the rebellion’s damage. Though the causes of the rebellion seem to be
rooted in a specific historical context, the broader lessons of the dangers of political-military
imbalances are easily relevant to modern day. Thus, the lessons of the An Lushan Rebellion
continue to transcend time and place, and stand as an example and warning to all regimes, past,
present and future.