The Cambridge History of China. Vol. 06. Alien Regimes and Border States, 907-1368
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A-PAO-CHI BECOMES THE NEW KHAGHAN 6l
the Wu-ku (tentatively identified with the Onggirad). Liao dominion was
steadily spreading north and northwestward.
Meanwhile, relations with the Chinese border areas remained strained. In
Lu-lung, the governor, Liu Jen-kung, was deposed in 907 by his son Liu
Shou-kuang, who continued his father's hostility toward the Khitan. In 909
a Khitan army led by a member of the Hsiao consort family drove deep into
Hopei and defeated Liu Shou-kuang somewhere southwest of present-day
Tientsin. But Liu's ambitions were set high; in 911 he proclaimed himself
emperor of the independent state of
Yen
(once the name of An Lu-shan's rebel
regime) and began to invade the neighboring provinces to enlarge his terri-
tory. But on the same day that he proclaimed himself emperor, the Khitan
occupied P'ing-chou, west of Shan-hai kuan. In 912 A-pao-chi personally led
an army to attack Liu Shou-kuang. Then in the next year Li Ts'un-hsii - who
had been the Sha-t'o ruler of Ho-tung since the death in 908 of his father Li
K'o-yung and who later became Emperor Chuang-tsung of the Later Tang
(reigned 923—6)
—
was alarmed by Liu Shou-kuang's aggressive actions, de-
cided to intervene, invaded Lu-lung, and took its capital, Yu-chou. Liu
Shou-kuang was captured and the Yen regime was destroyed; Lu-lung was
incorporated into the Sha-t'o domain, known to its contemporaries as Chin.
Li Ts'un-hsii now ruled effectively over the entire border region fronting
Khitan territory and was steadily consolidating a powerful regime that pre-
sented a major challenge to the Liang dynasty based in Ho-nan that had been
set up by his father's old rival Chu Wen in 907.
A-pao-chi had, of course, once sworn brotherhood with Li K'o-yung, but
the latter had never forgiven him for subsequently trying to establish friendly
relations with his hated enemy Chu Wen, emperor of the Liang. Li Ts'un-
hsii,
in control of the powerful satrapy of Chin, which now encompassed
northern Ho-pei as well as Ho-tung, was a far more powerful and threatening
adversary for the Khitan than Liu Shou-kuang had been. Fortunately for A-
pao-chi, Li Ts'un-hsii was preoccupied with more important ambitions con-
cerning China. For the time being, therefore, an uneasy truce prevailed on
the Khitan frontier.
Relations with his neighbors were also of secondary importance to A-pao-
chi,
for he faced a major problem in maintaining his supreme power among
the Khitan. After his election as leader in 907, his plans to consolidate his
absolute authority did not go unchallenged. The biggest threat came from
his younger brothers and other members of the Yeh-lii clan, who had become
the new Khitan aristocracy following the eclipse of the Yao-lien. In tradi-
tional Khitan society, succession to both the khaghanate and tribal
chief-
tainships had commonly passed to brothers or cousins. Moreover, custom
demanded that the ruler be reelected every three years, when another mem-
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62 THE LIAO
ber of the tribal council or another candidate from his own clan might be
chosen to replace him. In 910, when his reelection was due, A-pao-chi failed
to go through this procedure, and his brothers, feeling cheated of their own
chances of succession, sought to prevent him from establishing a permanent
dynasty based on succession from father to son, as this would have ended
forever their own claims to leadership. Most resentful was the eldest of A-
pao-chi's younger brothers, La-ko.
In 911 four of the younger brothers rebelled, and in 912 another plot to
assassinate A-pao-chi engineered by the same four brothers was uncovered
before it could be carried out. In 913, when A-pao-chi's second three-year
term as khaghan came to an end and he again refused to put himself forward
for reelection, a far more serious rebellion, led by his brothers, his uncle, and
his cousin who was chieftain of the I-la, broke out and was suppressed with
much bloodshed. All these rebellions failed, however, and their defeat acceler-
ated the accumulation of power in A-pao-chi's hands. But he was not yet a
complete despot. He remained sufficiently enmeshed in the Khitan tribal
system that he could not simply eliminate all his rivals. His brothers' lives
were spared, although his uncle and cousin and more than three hundred of
their supporters were executed.
To compensate the brothers and other collateral relatives and to prevent
further unrest among the Yeh-lii clan, A-pao-chi combined their families
into the so-called Three Patriarchal Households
(san-fu
fang),
encompassing
all the descendants of A-pao-chi's grandfather, which became one of the
privileged lineage groups of the Liao empire (see Figure 1). But the dissatis-
faction over a permanent hereditary leadership among the imperial family
and the struggles over the succession did not cease there. In 917 La-ko again
rebelled and fled to Yu-chou where he was received by Li Ts'un-hsii, ruler of
the Chin, who appointed him a prefect. Later, when Li Ts'un-hsii became
emperor of the Later T'ang in 923, he executed La-ko as a gesture of goodwill
and friendship toward A-pao-chi. In 918 there was another short-lived upris-
ing led by another of the brothers, Tieh-la. Disputes over the leadership and
succession troubles frequently flared up among A-pao-chi's descendants.
In 916, when he should yet again have presented himself to the tribal
leaders for reelection, A-pao-chi took still more drastic steps to consolidate
his authority on a permanent basis. First he went through a Chinese-style
accession ceremony, claiming for himself the title of emperor of the Khitan
and adopting a reign title,
1
' thus proclaiming his independence of the Liang
15 There is great confusion about T'ai-tsu's reign titles Shen-ts'e (916) and T'ien-tsan (922), which some
scholars claim were invented later. The first reign title for which there is independent contemporary
confirmation is that of T'ien-hsien, adopted by A-pao-chi in the last year of his life (926) and also used
under his successor T'ai-tsung. See Arthur C. Moule, The
rulers
of China (London, 1937), pp. 91 fT.
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A-PAO-CHI BECOMES THE NEW KHAGHAN 63
(whose calendar the Khitan had previously used) and signifying that he was
now the equal of the Chinese rulers. Perhaps most significant of all, he
proclaimed his eldest son Pei (900-37; Khitan name, T'u-yii) as heir appar-
ent. This formally ended the claims of his brothers and other clan members
to the succession and also preempted the rights of the tribal elders to elect
their leader in the traditional way. Pei himself was much influenced by
Chinese culture and most unlikely to revert to the old Khitan custom. Yet
another symbolic gesture toward the founding of
a
Chinese-style regime was
the establishment of the first Confucian temple, which must have seemed
very out of
place
among these bloodthirsty and violent warriors, even though
a small minority of Khitan nobles were beginning to become versed in
Chinese letters.
In 918, in another step toward establishing a more permanent regime, A-
pao-chi ordered the building of a great capital city, the Imperial Capital
(Huang-tu), later to be known as the Supreme Capital (Shang-ching). This
was constructed at Lin-huang, north of the Shira muren (a place that later
became the Mongol city of Boro Khoton), in the ancient central territory of
the Khitan tribes. For its construction, mass levies of corvee labor were
mobilized, during the busiest months of the agricultural year: A-pao-chi had
not yet grasped the finer points of Chinese-style governance of an agrarian
population. The work is said to have been finished in one hundred days, but
in fact it continued for some time. Later in the same year he ordered the
construction of Confucian, Buddhist, and Taoist temples at the capital. In
the last year of A-pao-chi's life the capital was further extended, and a series
of halls and ancestral shrines were built. Eventually the capital covered an
area of 27 It: It was built on a standard Chinese plan with walls, gates, a
street grid, palaces, ministry buildings, temples, courier stations, and so
forth. It was in fact a dual city, for to the south was a separate Chinese city,
with dense housing and markets. It also had a special quarter for the Uighur
merchants, who played a major part in the trade of the north, and lodgings
for envoys from foreign nations. We cannot accurately date the growth of the
city, as parts of the walls were rebuilt in 931, and further construction went
on well into the eleventh century. By then it was only one of five capital
cities.
The construction of a permanent capital symbolized A-pao-chi's rapid
development of a centralized administration and institutions. Already by this
time A-pao-chi seems to have begun the dualistic form of administration that
continued until the end of the
Liao,
with
a
Northern Administration responsi-
ble for the tribal portion of his domain and a Southern Administration,
organized more closely on the T'ang model, responsible for the sedentary
portion and especially the Chinese population. As early as 910, A-pao-chi
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
64 THE LIAO
appointed his brother-in-law Hsiao Ti-lu to head his Northern Administra-
tion. This development culminated in the formal division of the empire in
947 into Northern and Southern divisions (Pei-yiian, Nan-yiian), but the
process was clearly under way long before this. In the later years of A-pao-
chi's reign, captured Chinese officials played a major role in developing the
administrative system. Han Yen-hui (d. 959), a former provincial finance
official from Lu-lung, devised a tax system and was largely responsible for
designing the Chinese administration of the south.'
6
Dating the development of changes in governmental organization in this
early period is impossible. Probably much remained personal and informal.
The existence of a fixed capital should not be taken to imply a permanent
government structure with regular premises and a fixed court, as under a
normal Chinese dynasty. Instead, government remained with the emperor's
entourage, and the court was peripatetic, annually progressing on a circuit of
seasonal hunting grounds
(na-po)
and, from time to time, accompanying the
emperor on his frequent campaigns.
17
The "court" was a great portable city of
tents and pavilions, transported on a train of ox-drawn wagons. The entour-
age lived partly off the land surrounding their camp: The local inhabitants
were sometimes granted tax exemptions in recompense. In the early days at
least, the imperial palace at the capital was not the expected vast range of
lavish buildings but, rather, the site where the emperor's tents were pitched
when he was in residence.
In 916 and 917 A-pao-chi once again attempted to intervene in China.
At this time Li Ts'un-hsii and the Liang emperor Mo-ti (Chu Yu-chen) were
locked in conflict, righting for control of central and southern Hopei.
A-pao-chi seized the opportunity to invade Li Ts'un-hsii's territory in north-
ern Ho-tung and Hopei. In 917 the Khitan besieged Yu-chou for two
hundred days and were finally driven off only by the arrival of a powerful
army from Ho-tung led by Li Ssu-yiian, later to become the second em-
peror, Ming-tsung, of the Later T'ang. In 921 and 922 the Khitan again
invaded Hopei, this time at the request of
a
local governor nominally allied
to Li Ts'un-hsii and the Sha-t'o leaders in Ho-tung. They easily overran the
main frontier passes, gained control of some Chinese territory east of mod-
ern Shan-hai-kuan (then known as Yii-kuan), and penetrated as far south as
Chen-chou. Li Ts'un-hsii personally mobilized an army to repel them on
this occasion.
16 LS, 74, p. 1331—2.
17 On the na-po, see Yao Ts'ung-wu, "Shuo Ch'i-tan te na po wen hua," in vol. 2 of his
Tung-pet
sbib lun
is'ung (Taipei, 1959), pp. 1—320. See also the classic study by Fu Le-huan, dating from 1942,
included in revised form in his
Liao
shib
Is'ung
k'ao (Peking, 1984), pp. 36—172.
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A-PAO-CHI BECOMES THE NEW KHAGHAN
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The Khitan and north China, A.D. 924
Shortly after this the situation in China took a major turn: In 923 Li Ts'un-
hsii finally vanquished the Liang and set up his own Sha-t'o dynasty of Later
T'ang, ostensibly as a restoration of the T'ang. He was now the undisputed
master of northern China, as the Liang emperors had never been. By 925 he
had established control over all northern China except for two minor border
provinces south of the Ordos (Ling-chou and Hsia-chou), and in the autumn
and winter of 925 he defeated the major state of Shu in Szechwan (see Map
2).
He was now a formidable adversary for the Khitan. Although there were
still some border scuffles, for the time being A-pao-chi remained neutral and
launched no further campaigns into China on the scale of those of 917.
Instead, he turned
his
attentions northward and eastward. In 919
the
Wu-ku
were finally subdued. Then in 924-5 A-pao-chi led a great expedition into
the steppe, which conquered the tribes of northern Mongolia and reached as
far
as
the old Uighur capital city Ordu Baliq, on the Orkhon River. While he
himself led his army west into eastern Dzungaria, he sent another force
southwest across the desert to establish his sovereignty over those of the
Uighurs who had settled in the western Kansu corridor, between the Gobi
and the Tibetan plateau. Meanwhile, another Khitan force, led by A-pao-
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66 THE LIAO
chi's second son Te-kuang (Khitan name Te-chin, later to become the Liao
emperor T'ai-tsung; reigned 927—47), crossed the Gobi southward and estab-
lished Khitan control over the tribal peoples of the Yin-shan area and the
northeastern corner of the Ordos, including remnants of the T'u-yii-hun and
some minor Tangut groups.
In 926, only a year after returning home from these extensive conquests,
A-pao-chi set out on a still more ambitious expedition. The target this time
was the powerful state of Po-hai (Parhae), which ruled over a large area of
eastern Manchuria and the coastal region beyond and with which there had
been border clashes in 924. Po-hai, unlike A-pao-chi's other adversaries, was
not a tribal federation of nomadic pastoral peoples but a centralized state on
the Chinese model that had long enjoyed stable relations not only with China
but also with Korea and Japan. It was a rich country, with five capitals,
fifteen superior prefectures, sixty-two prefectures, many cities, and, in the
south at least, a largely sedentary agrarian population. Militarily, however, it
proved no match for A-pao-chi's armies. It fell within two months, and its
king and nobility were removed to the Khitan court. Instead of annexing its
territory outright, A-pao-chi changed its name to the kingdom of Tung-tan
and appointed as its king his eldest son, the Chinese-influenced heir apparent
Pei.
Tung-tan became a vassal kingdom, retaining intact for the time being
its own administrative apparatus and even continuing to use its own reign
titles.
Why A-pao-chi acted so cautiously toward Po-hai is not entirely clear. He
may well have thought that the still-immature Khitan system of government
was not yet ready to cope with the very different and far more complex
problems of administering a large territory mostly settled by a sedentary
population and with many cities; he may simply have wished to avoid
antagonizing its numerous and potentially hostile population; and he may
have wished to carve out a permanent appanage for his own designated heir,
who,
as it turned out, was not favored by the Khitan nobles to succeed him as
khaghan.
Having swallowed Po-hai, A-pao-chi appears to have resumed his inten-
tion of expanding into northern China. In 926 there was a court coup in the
Later T'ang capital at Lo-yang. Li Ts'un-hsii had been militarily successful,
but his political organization was unstable. Early in 926 his armies in Ho-
nan and Hopei mutinied and killed him, replacing him with his adopted son
Li Ssu-yiian (reigned as Ming-tsung, 926—33), a provincial commander from
Hopei. The new Later T'ang emperor sent an envoy named Yao K'un to
report his accession to A-Pao-chi, who was still in Po-hai. Yao later wrote a
detailed account of his reception, which survives and from which we learn
that A-pao-chi announced his intention of first occupying Yu-chou and Ho-
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A-PAO-CHI BECOMES THE NEW KHAGHAN 67
pei and then making
a
settlement with the Later T'ang.
18
When the envoy
demurred, A-pao-chi toned down his territorial demands
to
simply Chen-
chou and Yu-chou
—
slightly more than the old province of Lu-lung.
The
envoy still refused.
At
this point A-pao-chi suddenly fell sick and died.
In
the subsequent confusion the invasion plan was forgotten, but had he lived
he had clearly intended a major invasion of Hopei.
At his death A-pao-chi was still only fifty-four. He had been leader of the
Khitan for only two decades, but he had transformed them from
a
local
if
powerful tribal confederation into
a
well-organized regime controlling
the
nomadic peoples of Mongolia and Manchuria, as well as the former territories
of
Po-hai.
His state had incorporated many Chinese from the border regions,
established cities for their residence, encouraged a diversity of industries and
settled farming, and accepted in principle the idea that the regime needed
a
dual form
of
organization, which would be able
to
administer the settled
farming population of the south and also to govern by more traditional means
the tribal peoples under their dominion.
A-pao-chi had encouraged the importation of Chinese systems of belief and
other aspects
of
culture. But
at
the same time he had tried
to
protect
the
Khitan culture, most importantly by providing his people with
a
writing
system. On his accession the Khitan had been illiterate, and written Chinese
was the only available medium for record keeping.
In
920 the first Khitan
script (the "large script,"
an
adaptation
of
the Chinese script
to
the very
different, highly inflected Khitan language) was presented, and by the end of
A-pao-chi's reign this script was widely used. In 925, when Uighur envoys
visited the court, the emperor's younger brother Tieh-la (whom A-pao-chi
recognized as the most clever member of
his
family) was entrusted with their
reception and, after learning their script (which was alphabetic), devised
a
second "small script" for Khitan.
Thus
by
the end
of
A-pao-chi's reign
it
was possible
to
operate
a
dual
system
of
government
in
which
the
northern tribal section conducted
its
business and kept documents
in
Khitan and the southern (Chinese) section
used both Chinese and Khitan. This would help the Khitan preserve their
authority and cultural identity, but
it
also made permanent the conflicting
elements within the Khitan elite, some of whom remained intransigent
in
their adherence to tribal values and institutions, whereas others adopted to a
greater
or
lesser degree the often different ideas and practices from China.
The "dualistic" nature
of
the state created
by
A-pao-chi may have been
a
18 For a detailed study of this fascinating document, which presents a vivid portrait of A-pao-chi, see Yao
Ts'ung-wu, "A-pao-chi
yii
Hou T'ang shih ch'en Yao K'un hui chien t'an hua chi lu,"
Wen
shih che
bsiieh
pao,
5
(1953), pp. 91-112; repr. with revisions
in
vol. 1 of his
Tung-pei
shlb lun u'ung (Taipei,
1959).
PP- 217-47-
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68 THE LIAO
strength,
as
the Khitan became more and more involved
in
the Chinese
world, but
it
was also inherently divisive.
THE SUCCESSION CRISIS AND THE REIGN OF T'AI-TSUNG
According to the arrangement A-pao-chi established in 916, the succession
should have passed automatically after his death to the designated heir appar-
ent Pei (900—37) without discord.
19
But this was not to be. The cultured and
refined Pei
—
a skilled painter, some of whose works were later included
in
the Sung imperial collection; an accomplished writer
in
both Khitan and
Chinese;
a
bibliophile with
a
large personal library and
a
taste for Chinese
culture; and an expert also
in
music, medicine, and prognostication
-
did
not appeal
to
the traditionally minded Khitan chieftains. A-pao-chi's per-
sonal authority had been sufficient to have him made heir apparent, in denial
of all Khitan custom and precedent, but even A-pao-chi seems later to have
realized that his younger son Te-kung was the better candidate, and once A-
pao-chi was dead
it
soon became clear that a simple transfer of the throne to
Pei was not in the cards.
The decisive factor
in
the succession was A-pao-chi's formidable widow,
Empress Ch'un-ch'in (later entitled Empress Dowager Ying-t'ien). She had
been a great power during A-pao-chi's lifetime, the first of
a
series of domi-
nant empresses that gives a special character to the Khitan regime. She had
played an open and active role. Early in the reign Ch'un-ch'in had devised a
plan for A-pao-chi
to
murder some
of
the tribal chiefs who opposed him.
Later she established her own military camp
(jardo),
commanded her own
army of 200,000 horsemen with which she maintained order when A-pao-chi
was away on campaign, and even herself organized campaigns against rival
tribes.
After A-pao-chi's death Ch'un-ch'in took control of all military and
civil affairs. When the time for his interment came, she declined to be buried
together with him according
to
custom, though more than three hundred
persons were buried with him
in
his mausoleum. Instead, she cut off her
right hand and had this placed
in
his coffin while she survived
to
act
as
regent,
for,
she claimed, her sons were still young and the country was
without a ruler. She remained in firm control while the succession was settled
and exercised great influence for many years to come.
Ch'un-ch'in herself had disapproved of the choice of
Pei,
and she used all
her influence to have him set aside in favor of his younger brother Te-kuang
(902—47), whom,
it
seems, even A-pao-chi had eventually acknowledged
19 See Yao Ts'ung-wu, "Ch'i-tan chiin wei chi ch'eng wen t'i te fen hsi,"
Wen shih che hsiieh
pao,
2(1931),
pp.
81
—iujrepr. in his
Tung-pa shih lun
ti'ung (Taipei, 1959), pp. 248-82, for a general discussion
of the succession problem under the Liao.
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THE SUCCESSION CRISIS AND THE REIGN OF T'AI-TSUNG 69
was the better candidate. Te-kuang was much more a potential leader in the
traditional Khitan tribal mold, although like Pei he was educated and a
capable calligrapher. He had distinguished himself
on
the battlefield during
the invasion of Ho-pei in 921-2 and played a major role as a commander in
the western campaign of
924—5.
Pei seems to have sensed danger for himself and helped persuade the
Khitan dignitaries at court that he should be passed over in favor of his
younger brother. Months went by with the succession still in doubt. Eventu-
ally, toward the end of 927 Pei himself approached his mother and formally
withdrew his claim. Te-kuang then succeeded to the throne. He is usually
known by his posthumous temple name of T'ai-tsung.
Pei was still, however, the ruler (Jen-huang wang) of Tung-tan, the
former state of Po-hai. After the prolonged succession problem, T'ai-tsung
regarded Pei as the greatest threat to his own authority and feared that he
would use the wealthy and populous Tung-tan state as a power base from
which to realize his frustrated claims to the Khitan throne. One at least of
Pei's consorts was a member of the Po-hai royal family. In 929 T'ai-tsung
ordered that the capital of Tung-tan and all its people be moved to Tung-
p'ing (present-day Liao-yang), which was designated the Southern Capital of
the Khitan state. Tung-tan was not abolished, but it was now more closely
integrated into the Khitan empire and gradually lost the special quasi-
autonomous status it had been granted in 926. Pei seems to have been placed
under surveillance. In 930 he fled by sea to China. He was received with
honor at the Later T'ang court of Ming-tsung in Lo-yang and lived there in
exile until 937, when he was murdered by Shih Ching-t'ang,
20
whom the
Khitan emperor had supported to overthrow the Later T'ang regime and who
remained a subservient puppet of the Khitan.
During T'ai-tsung's reign, actions against the border regions continued.
In 928 there was renewed trouble with the Wu-ku in the north. In 929 the
emperor's younger brother Li-hu was sent to attack the border area north of
Ta-t'ung, and in 933 he mounted an expedition against some Tangut tribes
that had still not submitted. But the most important aspect of the reign was
the gradual involvement of the Khitan in the political scene in north China.
The regime of the Later T'ang proved to be unstable. Its emperor, Ming-
tsung, had undertaken important reforms of government, restored the power
and influence of his bureaucrats, and built up palace armies that could
outweigh the forces of his provincial generals. But his reign ended badly,
with an attempted coup by one of
the
princes a few days before his death. His
20 Or according to another account by the last Later T'ang ruler, immediately before Shih Ching-t'ang
took Loyang. See IS, 72, p. 1211.
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70 THE LIAO
son Li Ts'ung-hou (temple name Min-ti) lasted only five months, before his
adoptive brother Li Ts'ung-k'o usurped the throne and killed him. At this
point the former Khitan heir apparent, Pei, who had been living under the
protection of Ming-tsung, wrote to his brother T'ai-tsung suggesting that he
invade the Later T'ang empire. This was in 934.
In 936 Li Ts'ung-k'o ordered the powerful governor of Ho-tung, Shih
Ching-t'ang, to be transferred to a post in Shantung where he would be
under closer court control. Shih Ching-t'ang rebelled, and Li Ts'ung-k'o led
an army to attack him in T'ai-yiian. Shih Ching-t'ang was another Sha-t'o
Turk, a son-in-law of the late emperor Li Ssu-yiian, and his rebellion led to
other provincial rebellions against the Later T'ang. Hard pressed by Li
Ts'ung-k'o, he now appealed to the Khitan emperor for military assistance.
T'ai-tsung personally led an army of fifty thousand cavalry across the border
through the Yen-men pass and defeated the Later T'ang army near Shih
Ching-t'ang's capital at T'ai-yiian. The T'ang regime speedily disintegrated.
In the eleventh month of 936, the Khitan invested Shih Ching-t'ang as
emperor of a new dynasty, the Chin. He was nothing more than a puppet of
the Khitan.
In 937, to curry favor with his new overlord, Shih Ching-t'ang murdered
the unfortunate Pei and, later in that year, agreed with T'ai-tsung that he
would treat him as his father, thus symbolically placing his dynasty on a
footing of inferiority to the Khitan. The Chin monarch seems to have realized
how completely he was entrapped by the Khitan and offered to pay a huge
annual subsidy to the Khitan to compensate for the return of the vital
prefectures of Yu-chou and Chi-chou that they had occupied. The Khitan
refused, and after some difficult negotiations in the next year the Khitan
received the cession of sixteen formerly Chinese prefectures, including a
broad belt from Ta-t'ung to Yu-chou. This new territory gave the Khitan
control of
all
the strategic passes that defended northern China, and a sizable
foothold in Hopei (see Map 3).
T'ai-tsung had achieved his father's territorial ambitions and, in the bar-
gain, had become the nominal overlord of a Chinese emperor. For the first
time a Chinese regime openly acknowledged the suzerainty of an alien dy-
nasty. The arrangement between T'ai-tsung and his puppet lasted only a few
years and collapsed after Shih Ching-t'ang died in 942. But the results were
far-reaching. The Khitan would hold on to most of the Sixteen Prefectures
until the end of their dynasty. Yu-chou became the new Southern Capital of
the Khitan (the former Southern Capital, center of Tung-tan, now became
the Eastern Capital and grew into a city even larger than the Supreme
Capital). A strong Khitan administration was imposed on the former Chinese
territory, and the Khitan state incorporated a very large Chinese population.
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