Although the Song Dynasty followed the Tang Dynasty in terms of division, it was generally divided into three levels (road, prefecture, and county), the local power operation logic is very different from that in the Tang Dynasty. In short, the local level is full of officials, nominally sent by the central government. Although he later became a real local official, there were four central officials in the category of Zheng, Cao, Xian and Cang that were responsible for supervising local officials. All local wealth must be handed over to the central government. From this we can find that the Song Dynasty's idea of governing the country was a typical combination of centralization and local authority. Anything that local governments had to look at the central government's expression, otherwise they could not survive independently at all. This may be relatively stable in a closed geographical environment, but in an environment surrounded by strong enemies on all sides and large-scale wars may break out at any time, the local area obviously lacks the ability to adapt to the situation and temporarily recruit troops to defend the city. Therefore, during the Song Dynasty, foreign invasions were often unstoppable.
In addition, the Song Dynasty also followed this logic in the military service system. The Central Imperial Guards and the Local Fang Army were not selected and guaranteed according to the same standard. The Xiang Army is actually a traitor and has no combat effectiveness at all. The Central Imperial Guard fought on all sides and turned around. The frequent adjustments of the army caused generals to not recognize the troops and refused to recognize them. Due to the mobility of the army at that time, the important task of guarding the border, quelling civil strife, and defending strong enemies from outside was unable to complete the important task of guarding the border, quelling civil strife, and defending strong enemies from outside. Over time, the proportion of elderly soldiers who were paid in the imperial guards gradually increased, and the combat effectiveness of the army became weaker and weaker. When , the Southern Song , in fact, the generals recruited and trained their own soldiers, so the emperor was very taboo, fearing that the separatist and usurped the throne of the Tang Dynasty would reappear again.
blindly denies this way of governing strong central and weak places is obviously a God's perspective after breaking through the limitations of time and space. However, if the external environment of the Song Dynasty was not so bad, perhaps this method might not be the worst as Mr. Qian Mu said. The prosperity of the commodity economy in the Song Dynasty was recognized historically, which was not unrelated to the lack of power in local officials and the inability to control business. Assume that this has always been the case, under the control of Neo-Confucianism, perhaps in a few hundred years, a commodity economy model that was completely different from Protestant ethics capitalism will appear in the Song Dynasty. In addition, the Song Dynasty did not suppress the bad habit of killing civil officials for the rest of its life, and perhaps a constitutional germination would appear?
However, there is no assumption in history. Just as Roman Empire was destroyed by barbarians, even though the Song Dynasty was well-developed, it could not defeat the Iron Cavalry. It is safe to say that the relaxation of commercial trade by later dynasties after the Song Dynasty never reached such a high level, and the restrictions on local power continued the Song Dynasty's ideas. Apart from the chaos in the last year, local officials of various dynasties no longer had military power (the blood relatives and nobles were in charge of soldiers is another story), nor did they have unified administrative power and relatively independent financial revenue and expenditure rights.
