To expel the Rong: Alien population transfer proposals during the Wei and Western Jin

Abstract

Throughout the first three centuries of the Common Era large numbers of non-Chinese peoples from Inner Asia migrated into the territories ruled over and administered by the Eastern Han (25-220 AD), Wei (220-65 AD) and Western Jin (265-316 AD) Dynasties. During the Third Century, a number of these immigrants and their descendants engaged in destructive revolts against the Chinese regimes ruling over them. Ultimately, many of their descendants would play important rôles in the overthrow of the Western Jin and the establishment of the “Sixteen Kingdoms,” which dominated the Central Plain in the Fourth and early Fifth Centuries. In the second half of the Third Century, three officials of the Wei and Western Jin Dynasties separately presented memoranda proposing a variety of measures designed to alleviate problems seen as arising from the settlement of these alien peoples in Chinese territory. These individuals were Deng Ai 鄧艾 in 251 AD, Guo Qin 郭欽 in 280 AD and Jiang Tong 江統 in 299 (or 300) AD. Amongst the policies proposed in their memoranda, these three statesmen proposed that large numbers of these non-Chinese populations be forcibly moved to the frontier or expelled from Wei or Jin territory. The proposals contained in the latter two memoranda were rejected in their entirety, while those in the first memorandum were only implemented in part. Since at least the Tang Dynasty, both pre-Modern and Twentieth Century Chinese scholars have tended to identify the reasons for the rejections of such policies as being their alleged impracticality, whilst commending the supposed farsightedness of their authors in identifying the threat posed by the alien peoples dwelling within the Wei and Jin’s territories. The author of the most comprehensive expulsion proposal, Jiang Tong, has even been held by one highly regarded modern scholar to have been engaged in a mere hypothetical exercise. However, such views are mistaken and anachronistic. The first two of the proposed population transfers were certainly within the administrative capacity of the Wei and Western Jin states. Moreover, even Jiang Tong’s much more comprehensive plan was likely capable of implementation in its entirety. Rather, the proposals contained in the three memoranda were rejected not due to impracticality, but because of the clear preference amongst sections of the Wei and Western Jin elite for the advantages offered by the presence of such unassimilated alien peoples within Chinese territory and because they conflicted too strongly with the priorities of those regimes’ rulers. Despite their non-implementation (and despite only rarely having been subjected to detailed scholarly analysis), the three memoranda are historically significant for their provision of a highly informative snapshot of attitudes to the non-Chinese peoples held by sections of the Chinese elite in the Third Century. They enable us to trace the contours of a continuing and influential debate, inherited from the Han, setting adherents of “Exclusivist” approaches, stressing the existence of fundamental differences between Chinese and aliens against their ideological opponents who favoured “Transformationalist” traditions upholding the ability of Chinese civilisation to positively transform non-Chinese peoples. In particular, the three memoranda themselves contain a consistent and coherent Exclusivist characterisation of non-Chinese Inner Asian peoples and indicate the increasing prominence of Exclusivist approaches amongst elite Chinese during the Third Century AD. Simultaneously, they also demonstrate the inherent ambiguities and consequent weakness of Exclusivism during the Third Century, which was often forced to rely for its arguments upon the authority of classical texts, which contained implicit Transformationalist assumptions.