Power and Politics in Tenth-Century China: The Former Shu Regime Available to Purchase

Hongjie Wang's Power and Politics in Tenth-Century China: The Former Shu Regime is a solid entry in the field of Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms studies. The growth of this field in the past five years has been dramatic, if only because there was so little available in English beforehand, and not much more in Chinese or Japanese. Just as importantly, the new research in English has broken with the traditional view of the first half of the tenth century as simply a chaotic interregnum between great dynasties. Hongjie Wang's book continues this trend, seeing the period as interesting for its own reasons, particularly for the light it sheds upon major threads of Chinese political ideology like the Mandate of Heaven. He adds a new aspect to this ongoing discussion by focusing on the early decades of the period, and the rise and fall of the Former Shu (907–25) regime...