John M. Jackson
jojacks2[at]vt.edu
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The Benefit of Water
Factors Leading to the Development of China's Grand Canal System
copyright © John M. Jackson, 2004
By the late sixth century A.D., China's lower Yangtze River basin had become a productive agricultural area. Meanwhile, the needs of the northern provinces' population were surpassing the Yellow River basin's limited agricultural potential. The empire's administrative apparatus could not simply move south, however (Van Slyke 67). Strong traditions and concerns for the empire's security required that China's political and military bases remain in the empire's northern provinces. If Chinese dynasties wanted to maintain a strong defensive presence in the empire's northern reaches, they would have to rely upon supplies from more productive locales. China's Grand Canal system, linking northern strongholds with the south's agrarian bounty, was an integral component of the empire's strategy to prevent invasion from northern neighbors (Chi 113).
Considering the Grand Canal's importance as an economic tool and engineering achievement, it has been given relatively little attention by Western writers. A careful search of comprehensive databases revealed no English-language books dealing specifically with the Grand Canal. While many books devoted to Chinese economic history contain sections about the canal, few give detailed insights into the waterway's historical development. Many writers seem content to describe the canal system's usefulness but ignore the complex conditions that led to its necessity.
In this paper, I will attempt to examine the factors leading to the Grand Canal's development during the Sui dynasty (581-616 A.D.). I hope that an analysis of these factors will show that the Canal system was a logical solution to China's perceived dilemma. Examining the Grand Canal's ultimate success or failure is beyond the scope of this paper, however, and will not be attempted here. Despite the canal, the Mongols of Central Asia did eventually mount a successful invasion of China, and they established the Yuan dynasty in the thirteenth century. Whether the Grand Canal was effective in postponing this inevitable invasion is debatable. Nevertheless, the Mongol conquerors apparently respected the system's value as a supply route. The Yuan dynasty maintained the existing canal system and extended it to their own northern capital, Beijing (Van Slyke 72-74).
The Chinese had been countering, with varying degrees of success, threats of such an invasion for centuries. In the third century B.C., Ch'in Shih Huang-ti amassed a labor force to connect the numerous inter-state walls of the feudal princes and created China's original Great Wall (Treagar 43). The Great Wall was intended to isolate Chinese farmers from the influence of northern Hsiung-nu nomads as well as to prevent full-scale invasion. Ch'in Shih Huang-ti's wall could not successfully deter the influence of the herders, however. The Great Wall's boundaries included large areas of land suited only for pastoral purposes and interchange between the two peoples continued (Tregear 44).
By the fourth century A.D., subsequent Chinese dynasties still had not halted northern aggression. The Chin dynasty, already weak and ineffective, was routed from the northern provinces by the invading Hsiung-nu in 317 (Twitchett 3). China would not again be united under a single emperor for another 270 years.
The emperor that finally succeeded in unifying China understood the forces that had led to the Hsiung-nu invasion and knew that certain measures would have to be taken to prevent his own downfall under similar circumstances (Van Slyke 67). Yang Chien, himself a descendant of sinicized northern invaders, unified China in 589 and ruled as the first emperor of the Sui dynasty (Sui Wen-ti); he established his capital at Ch'ang-an, on the lower Wei River (Bingham 304). Sui Wen-ti soon faced his own set of problems. Van Slyke writes, "As the Sui rulers surveyed their newly unified domain, they knew that north China, their own bailiwick and the region in which they planned to establish their capital, was no longer the grain basket of the empire" (66).
The Yellow River, or Huang-ho, valley had been the focal point of Chinese agricultural efforts and cultural development since Neolithic times (Tregear 46). The loess soil of the Huang-ho's middle section provided a loose, fertile medium for the growth of wheat, millet and other grains. A general scarcity of rainfall, however, limited the area's agricultural potential, as did the shortness of the growing season. The river's unpredictable nature also detracted from the basin's reliability as an agricultural center (Tregear 270; Needham Introductory Orientations 70). Producing very small food surpluses on a per-worker basis, the Huang-ho basin would require a large farming population to supply non-producing groups, such as armies or bureaucracies.
Expansion to the north or west offered no better prospects, as these areas received insufficient rainfall for agrarian pursuits. Lands to the east were better suited for grain cultivation and were initially used to supplement the shortfalls of the middle Huang-ho basin. Sui Wen-ti's son and successor, Yang-ti, eventually moved the capital east to Lo-yang, linking his seat of power with a better food source (Bingham 13). (Succeeding emperors would alternate the empire's capital from Ch'ang-an in the west to Lo-yang in the east, seeking a position that would balance the twin needs of frontier security and stable food source.) The poor drainage of the eastern lands prevented them from being a long-term solution to the empire's problem, however (Tregear 46). The growth of a non-producing bureaucratic and military class demanded large food surpluses that could not be attained in any of these regions. As the north, west, and east had already proven inadequate, the ruling houses looked to the south for a viable alternative.
The lower Yangtze River basin provided such an alternative. The area's rich soils combined with a shallow water table and year-round rainfall to form an excellent foundation for agricultural growth (Tregear 296-298). A mild climate ensured a long growing season and allowed for multiple annual harvests (Tregear 292). In his Introductory Orientations, Needham lists the region's abundance: "This is the heart of rice-growing country, though there is subsidiary cultivation of mulberry for silk, and of cotton. In the winter months, when the paddy-fields are dry, they are used for a second crop of wheat, beans, rape-seed or barley" (71). Since the Chou dynasty--and possibly before--the lower Yangtze had been supplying the north with other commodities, such as precious metals, ivory, pearls, hides, and wood (Tregear 48). The south was undoubtedly known as an area of many riches by Sui Wen-ti's time.
There can be little doubt that the lower Yangtze basin would attract immigration from the north. The promise of economic prosperity seems to have been insufficient to effect a mass migration, however, and many other factors worked to detach northern peasants from their homelands. In the late seventh century, Yellow River floods and Turkish invasions displaced many northern inhabitants. Others fled southward to avoid conscription into the imperial army (Pullyblank 27). Between 509 and 742, some scholars estimate, the northern provinces' share of China's population declined 20 per cent, while that of the southern provinces increased 26 per cent. As these numbers reflect only those whose immigration was recorded, however, the actual differences were undoubtedly much greater (Twitchett Financial Administration 12-13). Although emigration increased dramatically during the seventh and eighth centuries, the population had been slowly shifting southward for many years.
The peasantry's migration to southern territories had at least two major effects. First the increased number of farmers allowed the lower Yangtze basin to be shaped into an area that could produce large food surpluses. Second, the southern migration depleted the dynasty's treasury. As the southern provinces were not under strict central control, many of the peasants who migrated there were lost to the empire's tax rolls. The dynasty was also losing its source of labor for civil engineering projects and for military service (Twitchett Financial Administration 12). Peasants had been migrating to the southern provinces since Han times, and the loss of labor was seen by succeeding dynasties as a growing problem for China's northern sovereignty. Obviously, the empire needed an efficient communication/transportation system to maintain control over the south and to tap the area's growing economy. Rulers soon learned that Chinese skills in waterworks construction gave the empire a system that outperformed other available means of transport.
The Chinese grasped the advantages of water control very early, and ancient folklore has supplied its own version of canalization's origins. The Great Yu, according to tradition, initiated water control when he was commissioned to pacify the Huang-ho's flooding in the third millennium B.C. According to Chi, however, modern research "seems to have successfully destroyed the mystical theory which attributed the beginning of public works for water-control in China to the benevolent and self-sacrificing activities of a kingly hero" (50). Regardless of Yu's questionable authenticity, the concept of canalization was firmly entrenched in China by the eighth century B.C. (Chi 51).
These early canals were small-scale works, built for local irrigation purposes. Confucius, writing in the sixth century B.C., referred to them as a system of "ditches and furrows" (Chi 51-52). It would be another two hundred years before the Chinese would begin to use larger canals for mass transport.
The Chinese had already discovered other uses for canals, however. In addition to its agricultural uses, water control could be used against one's enemies. During the Warring States era (480-221 B.C.), feudal lords constructed waterworks that diverted water onto their neighbors' lands in times of flood or away from their neighbors' lands in times of drought. Canals also provided physical obstacles to invading forces, and they assumed deeper importance as the lords competed for irrigated lands (Needham Physics 265). By Yuan times, the Chinese would find another use for waterworks: power for textile and grain mills (Chi 97). The many advantages of artificial waterways were expressed by the Chinese term for hydraulic engineering--shui li--meaning "benefit of water" (Needham Physics 214). The efficiency of canals as a means of transport was not lost on the Chinese. Canal transport proved to be much more economically sound in ancient China than its alternatives--alternatives that had been used successfully in the past but proved unsuitable for mass transport.
By some estimates, China's imperial highway system contained more than 3,000 miles of roadway, and many more miles of smaller routes, by the third century B.C. (Needham Physics 15-16). The majority of these roadways, designed to accommodate carriages as well as pedestrians, radiated out from political and mercantile centers in the northern provinces, where they provided a swift means of communication and personal locomotion. Frequent rainfall in the southern provinces forestalled the development of a complex highway system in that area, however. At the same time that the wet climate made the southern rivers more navigable than those in the north, it often turned the rudimentary road system into an impassable quagmire (Tregear 184-185).
For the purpose of grain transport, canals easily outperformed roadways. During the T'ang dynasty, it was estimated that canal transport was at least 75 per cent less expensive than land haulage (Twitchett Financial 316-317). Admittedly, the road system had been an effective means of swift communication and personal transport for many centuries. However, Elvin writes, "The political significance of a swifter administrative nervous system, based on land transport with its superior speed, was surpassed, great though it undoubtedly was, by the economic advances in water transport which permitted cheap long-distance carriage of everyday goods in large quantities." On land a pair of oxen might pull one cartful of grain. On a canal towpath, the same oxen could pull dozens of grain-laden boats, as a ninth-century Japanese monk observed while journeying on the Grand Canal (Needham Physics 308). Similar ratios were exhibited when manpower was used to transport grain by road. Whereas two men were required to transport about five bushels of grain over land (Elvin 62), a boat crew of ten to twelve men could move a cargo of 15 to 25 tons (Van Slyke 74). In fact, the greater use of artificial waterways led to a general decline in the imperial road system beginning in Han times (Needham Physics 30).
Maritime transport would seem at first glance to have been an even more efficient grain transport system than conveyance by canal. The Chinese had developed many nautical technologies and possessed a sizable naval fleet during the Han dynasty. By the T'ang dynasty, Chinese traders were frequenting Japan and Korea (Tregear 62). Oceanic travel was relatively swift and cost-effective; large sea-going vessels could transport many times the cargo of a canal boat and were not encumbered by rising and falling river levels. Sea travel was not without its risks, however. Boats were frequently lost to storms and unfavorable currents. Later advances in boat design and navigation allowed the Chinese to master the seas, but these developments did not become widespread until the thirteenth century (Elvin 137-139). Even with advancements in nautics, oceanic shipping was not a feasible means of transporting grains to the northern capitals. Boats leaving the ports in the Yangtze delta would need to unload their cargo at the mouth of the unnavigable Huang-ho. The grain would be no closer to the capital at Lo-yang or Ch'ang-an than it had been at the journey's outset, and it would still face a long overland haul.
By the time Sui Wen-ti was rising to power in northern China, canals had long been accepted as an efficient means of conveyance. As early as the fifth century B.C., canals were being used for transport. In 486 B.C., the Hung Kou Canal was completed, connecting the Huang-ho and Huai Rivers (Chi 65). Canals continued to grow in importance and mileage, even while ruling families rose and fell. In the second century A.D., a Han dynasty advisor urged that the empire retain an ever-ready reserve of grain, available for times of famine or war (Chi 6). The transport of grain had assumed greater urgency.
Before he had even consolidated his power over China proper, Wen-ti turned his attention to water control and grain transport. In 587 A.D., he ordered the restoration of the Shan-yang Canal, connecting the Yangtze and Huai Rivers, for the purpose of transporting taxes in the form of grain (Chi 117).
Although Sui Wen-ti initiated a new era in canal-building, his son, Yang-ti, is credited with the Grand Canal's completion. In actuality, the Canal linked the smaller canals of earlier eras (Chi 114). Vast forces of manpower were assembled to begin canal construction in Yang-ti's first year as emperor (Bingham 17). The contemporary literati, who considered the canal an extravagance, did not view it favorably. The huge demands of labor made upon the peasantry in building Yang-ti's canal were a contributing factor in his early downfall in 616 (Bingham 117). History has granted Yang-ti some measure of grudging respect, though. Yu Shen-hsin wrote that Yang-ti "shortened the life of his dynasty by a number of years [by his extravagance in public works construction], but benefited posterity unto ten thousand generations. He ruled without benevolence, but his rule is to be credited with enduring accomplishments" (qtd. in Chi 122).
During Yang-ti's lifetime, and for many years afterward, the canal was used primarily to transport luxury goods from the south (Pulleyblank 127). In early T'ang times, most grain taxes from the south were converted to silk, which had a greater value-to-weight ratio (Twitchett Financial 71). The needs of the northern military were relatively small, as units were organized as self-sufficient militia. In the late seventh century, the militia began to be replaced by a professional standing army that relied upon supplies from outside sources (Twitchett Financial 85). From this point onward, the canal assumed great importance in supplying northern needs. During the eighth century, the canal was used to transport millions of tons of grain. By the ninth century, the Yang-tze supplied the dynasty with ninety per cent of the empire's land tax (Chi 124-125). Later dynasties continued to use the canal, often re-charting its course to suit their needs. As a testament to its own usefulness, the Grand Canal system remains in operation today, though it does not follow its original course.
We have seen that the canal system arose from the interaction of many diverse factors. The empire's stability depended upon a strong northern military and political presence to counter the threat of invasion by northern neighbors. A large population of non-producing groups--such as soldiers and bureaucrats--required food and supplies from the producing class. The middle Huang-ho basin, traditional center of Chinese development, could not produce sufficient surpluses; while the government and army had grown in size, many peasant farmers had migrated south, where production yields were much higher.
Canals had been used since Neolithic times and had proven the many benefits of water in irrigation, flood control, and transport. The Grand Canal, more cost-effective than overland haulage or maritime transport, linked military / political power in the north with the commodities of the south. Without the canal, the government's base of power would have been forced to move south. Defensive forces on the empire's northern borders would have either been withdrawn or left isolated from the control and influence of dynastic administration. In either case, the borders likely would have been overrun long before the Mongol invasion of the thirteenth century.
Why, then, has the Grand Canal gone largely unnoticed in the West, while its companion engineering marvel, China's Great Wall, has held such fascination? In Yang-tze, Van Slyke writes that the Grand Canal exhibits yin-like properties, while the Wall possesses attributes that are more yang-like in nature (65). The wall rises impressively over the landscape, while the canal lies tranquil within the earth's confines. Perhaps westerners are pulled to the wall's synthetic appearance; it is an obvious product of human labor. The canal, meanwhile, seems less a human construct than a passive product of nature. The canal's artificiality is more difficult to discern, thereby making its usefulness seem a mere by-product of its existence. To the imperial dynasties, however, the Grand Canal was as important to Chinese sovereignty as the Great Wall.
Works Cited
- Bingham, Woodbridge. The Founding of the T'ang Dynasty: The Fall of Sui and Rise of T'ang, A Preliminary Survey. 1941. New York: Octagon Books, 1970.
- Chi, Ch'ao-ting. Key Economic Areas in Chinese History as Revealed in the Development of Public Works for Water-Control. 1936. New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1970.
- Elvin, Mark. The Pattern of the Chinese Past. Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 1973.
Needham, Joseph. Introductory Orientations. Vol. 1 of Science and Civilisation in China. 1954. 7 vols. Cambridge, England: Cambridge UP, 1975.- _____. Physics and Physical Technology: Civil Engineering and Nautics. Vol. 4, pt. 3 of Science and Civilisation in China. 7 vols. Cambridge, England: Cambridge UP, 1971.
- Pulleyblank, Edwin G. The Background of the Rebellion of An Lu-Shan. 1955. London Oriental Series 4. London: Oxford UP, 1966.
- Tregear, T. R. China: A Geographical Survey. New York: Wiley-Halstead, 1980.
- Twitchett, Denis. Financial Administration Under the T'ang Dynasty. 1963. Cambridge, England: Cambridge UP, 1970.
- Twitchett, Denis, ed. Sui and T'ang China, 589-906. Vol. 3, pt. 1 of the Cambridge History of China. 10 vols. Cambridge, England: Cambridge UP, 1979.
- Van Slyke, Lyman. Yangtze: Nature, History, and the River. Reading MA: Addison-Wesley, 1988.