The years 657-668 were the high point of Tang imperial expansion, as Tang forces destroyed the Western Türk khaganate and the Korean kingdoms of Baekje and Goguryeo with assistance from two key allies: the Tegreg (Tiele) tribes, including the Uyghurs, and the Silla kingdom of southwestern Korea. Tang troops were now stationed as far west as Kashgar in the Tarim Basin and as far east as the former Goguryeo capital of Pyongyang. From 670 to 690, however, the Tang was forced onto the defensive: losing its recent gains in the Tarim Basin to the Tibetan empire, pulling out of Korea due to local revolts and a falling out with Silla, and relinquishing dominance over the steppe to a restored Eastern Türk khaganate. Against this backdrop of geopolitical crisis, Empress Dowager Wu (624-705)—the formidable and politically astute widow of Taizong’s successor Gaozong (r. 649-683)—first served as regent in 683-690 and then placed herself on the throne, becoming the only female emperor in Chinese history. Wu proclaimed a new dynasty, the Zhou, adopted the new name Wu Zhao, and reigned for fifteen years (690-705) before being forced to retire and restore the Tang dynasty to power under one of her sons.

Di Renjie (630-700) served with distinction as a minister under both Gaozong and Wu Zhao. In the last years of his life, he became a leading proponent of the argument that the Zhou empire had overextended itself. Di advocated withdrawing from the Anxi Protectorate in the Tarim Basin (recaptured from the Tibetans in 692) and the Andong Protectorate in Liaodong in order to consolidate Zhou defenses against the danger of invasion from the north. The memorial translated here, dated to 697, focused on the Anxi Protectorate but did not succeed in prompting a change in policy. Di Renjie submitted another memorial in 699, this time focusing on the inordinate cost of the Andong Protectorate and advocating the restoration of Goguryeo as a buffer state in Liaodong to avoid “fattening the barbarians of the four quarters while starving the Central Lands.” This second memorial led the Zhou court to replace the Andong Protectorate with a “bridled” area command under a former Goguryeo prince and quietly pull all Protectorate troops out of Liaodong—so quietly, in fact, that our sources erroneously claim that Di’s proposals were praised by his colleagues but ignored by Wu Zhao.

Contrary to some characterizations of Di Renjie as a conservative Confucian without a sound understanding of frontier policy, he arrived at his anti-expansionist arguments from bitter recent experience. The Kitan people of the upper Liao River basin had rebelled against Zhou suzerainty in 696, capturing the prefecture of Yingzhou (modern Chaoyang) and thus cutting off the only land connection to Zhou garrisons in Liaodong. These garrisons now had to be supplied by sea, a very costly undertaking. The Kitans also mounted devastating raids into the North China Plain before being attacked and subjugated in turn by the Eastern Türks, partly via the instigation of the Zhou court. But Yingzhou remained in Kitan hands, and things took a turn for the worse when the Eastern Türks themselves raided north China in 698, capturing or massacring thousands of Tang civilians. Di Renjie was assigned to inspect the ravaged prefectures after both the Kitan and Eastern Türk incursions, giving him first-hand knowledge of the damage done. Thus, although the memorial below seems to be based purely on classical or historical precedents and indulges in ethnocentric or denigrating language about barbarians, these tropes were actually meant to lend authority to a pragmatic proposal to improve the security of the imperial core by pulling out of peripheral regions.

The full text of Di Renjie’s memorial is preserved (with minor variations) in several sources, including his biography in the Jiu Tangshu (Old History of the Tang).

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I, your subject, have heard that when Heaven created the barbarians (Yi) of the four quarters, they all dwelt outside the allotted territory of the sage-kings. Therefore they were separated from [the Central Lands] in the east by the cerulean sea, in the west by the shifting sands, in the north by the great [Gobi] desert, and in the south by the Five Mountain Ranges (the Nanling Mountains). These are the means by which Heaven has set boundaries [between the Central Lands and] the barbarians and separated the inner (or central) from the outer lands….

If we use military force to pursue accomplishments in remote foreign countries, exhausting the state’s treasuries to fight for rocky and barren lands, we might conquer their people, but they would be too few to increase tax revenue, and we might gain their soil, but it would be too infertile to support farming and sericulture. If we seek a reputation for putting caps and sashes on (i.e., civilizing) distant barbarians while forsaking the principle of strengthening the roots (i.e., foundations) and bringing peace to the people, that would be to follow the practice of the [First] Emperor of Qin and Han Emperor Wu, not that of the five sage-kings and the kings of the three dynasties (Xia, Shang, and Zhou).

If we cross over the outer tributary regions to extend our borders and seek to conquer all remote lands to satisfy our desires, that would not only be relentlessly exhausting the people’s strength; it would also cause us to lose the hearts of all people in the realm. In the past, the First Emperor waged war after war to expand his territory. The men could not plow in the fields and the women could not weave silk at home. Along the Great Wall, the dead [laborers] piled up like bales of coarse hemp, and the whole realm then collapsed in revolt. Han Emperor Wu, seeking to avenge Emperor Gao’s long-held resentment¹, used the wealth accumulated under four previous emperors and conquered Chaoxian (Joseon), attacked the Western Regions, pacified Southern Yue, and attacked the Xiongnu. The treasury and granaries were emptied out, bandits and rebels arose like swarms of bees, the common people had to give their wives away and sell their sons, and tens of thousands were reduced to wandering as refugees. In his last years, he realized his error, ended the wars, and enfeoffed his chancellor [Tian Qianqiu] as the Noble Who Enriches the People.² For that reason, he [and his descendants] were able to regain Heaven’s favor and protection. There is an old saying: “No one has ever traveled safely by following the ruts left by a carriage that overturned.” Although this speaks of something small, it can serve as an analogy for bigger things.

Lately, our dynasty has launched military campaigns for years on end, and the attendant costs continue to grow. We have established the Four Garrisons [of the Anxi Protectorate] in the west and garrisons in Andong (the Andong Protectorate) in the east.³ The amount of supplies levied increases daily, exhausting the common people. By opening up and guarding the Western Regions, we have acquired nothing more than a rocky wasteland. The expense is unsustainable and there is no benefit to be gained, only loss. The transportation of supplies goes on without end; the weaving looms sit empty.⁴ We send troops across the desert and the sea to garrison scattered positions, and as their tours of duty drag on, their resentment at being separated from their families grows steadily….  At present, the Guandong region suffers famine, people in Shu-Han (Sichuan) are absconding from their homes, and endless levies and exactions imposed are on lands south of the Huai and Yangzi rivers. If the people lose their livelihoods, they will all turn to banditry. If the dynasty is shaken at its roots, the ensuing disaster will be no small thing. The cause of all this is our bleeding the Central Lands dry by garrisoning distant regions and fighting over the barren lands of barbarians, which goes against the way of nurturing the people as our children.

In the past, Han Emperor Yuan (r. 48-33 BCE) accepted Jia Juanzhi’s advice and abolished Zhuya commandery. Emperor Xuan (r. 74-48 BCE), too, followed Wei Xiang’s counsel and abandoned the military colony at Jushi.⁵ How could it be that they had no desire for vain glory and fame? It is just that they feared overburdening the people. More recently, during the Zhenguan era (627-649), [Emperor Taizong] subdued the Nine Clans [of the Tegreg] and invested Li Simo as Khagan [of the Eastern Türks] to rule over the various tribes.⁶ Essentially, when barbarians rebel, then we punish them, and when they surrender, then we conciliate them. This accords with the moral principle of “destroying that which was bound for destruction and preserving that which deserves to survive”⁷, and avoids the burdens of distant garrisons. This is an excellent recent precedent for bringing peace to the frontier.

I humbly observe that Ashina Husraw (Huseluo) is from the [Türk] nobility of the Yin Mountains that has dominated the desert for generations.⁸ If we hand the Four Garrisons over to him and authorize him to rule the foreign states, enfeoffing him as Khagan and sending him to repel enemy raids, then our empire will gain the noble reputation of reviving a fallen dynasty, and we will no longer have to bear the burden of transporting supplies to the outer regions. I, your subject, request that we give up the Four Garrisons to fatten (enrich) the Central Lands and abolish Andong to consolidate our position west of the Liao River. This will lessen our military expenses in distant regions and concentrate our troops on the frontier. Thus, the garrisons in the Heng-Dai region (northern Shanxi) will become stronger and the defense of our frontier prefectures will be enhanced.

Moreover, when it comes to pacifying barbarians, it is enough to prevent them from absconding [to submit to a rival power] and to ensure that they cannot invade us. What need is there to pursue them into their dens and burrows and try to prove ourselves bigger than mere mole crickets and ants? When a true king has quelled all external threats, internal threats are bound to arise because he has not paid enough attention to governing. I beseech Your Majesty to banish [the barbarians] from your thoughts and not concern yourself over remote lands that have yet to be conquered…. {As] the Yantie lun says, “Why should we trouble our thoughts by fighting over barbarians (Man-Mo) and their barren lands?”⁹

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1. A reference to the Xiongnu besieging Han emperor Gaozu (Emperor Gao) in Pingcheng/Baideng in 200 BCE; see source 2.4, note 8. ↩︎
2. This refers to Emperor Wu’s change of heart in the Luntai Edict of 89 BCE (see source 2.3, note 4). His conferment of this title on Tian Qianqiu was interpreted as a signal of his decision to turn from expensive wars to rebuilding the economy. ↩︎
3. The Four Garrisons of the Anxi Protectorate were established in 660 to maintain Tang control over the newly conquered Tarim Basin (on the question of dating this event, see this StoryMap). Located in the city-states of Kashgar (Shule/Shulik), Khotan (Yutian), Kucha (Qiuci), and Karashahr (Yanqi/Agni), they were overrun by the Tibetan empire in 663-670 and retaken in a counterattack by Zhou forces in 692. The Andong Protectorate was established in 668 to govern the newly conquered kingdom of Goguryeo but was withdrawn to the Liaodong peninsula in 676, due to local resistance and conflict with the kingdom of Silla. ↩︎
4. The women are outside plowing the fields, the men having been drafted for war. ↩︎
5. On Emperor Yuan and Jia Juanzhi, see source 2.4. Wei Xiang (d. 59 BCE) was a chief minister who dissuaded Emperor Xuan from counterattacking the Xiongnu to relieve the beleaguered Han military colony in Jushi (Turpan). Contrary to Di Renjie’s claim, Emperor Xuan did not abandon the colony and instead upgraded it into a Protectorate of the Western Regions in 60 BCE, after a local Xiongnu leader defected to the Han. ↩︎
6. Li Simo, originally named Ashina Simo (Simurgh?), was an Eastern Türk noble whom Taizong appointed as Khagan of the Eastern Türks in 639, after deciding to reestablish the Eastern Türk Khaganate and return the Eastern Türk population to the edge of the Gobi Desert (see source 6.4). Di Renjie seems to be conflating the Eastern Türks with the Tegreg Nine Clans, who were actually under the Syr-Yanda khaganate at this time. ↩︎
7. This quotes the Documents chapter “Zhonghui zhi gao” (Zhonghui’s Announcement). ↩︎
8. Ashina Husraw was the son of Ashina Buchin (Buzhen), a former Tang client Qaghan of the Western Türks. He succeeded his father but fled to Tang/Zhou territory in 690 after being attacked by the resurgent Eastern Türks. Di Renjie’s “Yin Mountains” appears to mean the Tianshan Mountains, rather than the Yin Mountains of the eastern Gobi. The former were in the former territory of the Western Türks, while the latter were formerly controlled by the Eastern Türks. ↩︎
9. This Yantie lun (see source 2.3) quote is adapted from Chapter 12, “Youbian” (Worrying about the Frontier). ↩︎