g placed on a par with
the emperor and soon entirely eliminating him in practice; in 680 she
removed the rightful heir to the throne and put her own son in his
place; after Kao Tsung's death in 683 she became regent for her son.
Soon afterward she dethroned him in favour of his twenty-two-year-old
brother; in 690 she deposed him too and made herself empress in the
"Chou dynasty" (690-701). This officially ended the T'ang dynasty.

Matters, however, were not so simple as this might suggest. For
otherwise on the empress's deposition there would not have been a mass
of supporters moving heaven and earth to treat the new empress Wei
(705-712) in the same fashion. There is every reason to suppose that
behind the empress Wu there was a group opposing the ruling clique. In
spite of everything, the T'ang government clique was very pro-Turkish,
and many Turks and members of Toba families had government posts and,
above all, important military commands. No campaign of that period was
undertaken without Turkish auxiliaries. The fear seems to have been felt
in some quarters that this T'ang group might pursue a military policy
hostile to the gentry. The T'ang group had its roots mainly in western
China; thus the eastern Chinese gentry were inclined to be hostile to
it. The first act of the empress Wu had been to transfer the capital to
Loyang in the east. Thus, she tried to rely upon the co-operation of the
eastern gentry which since the Northern Chou and Sui dynasties had been
out of power. While the western gentry brought their children into
government positions by claiming family privileges (a son of a high
official had the right to a certain position without having passed the
regular examinations), the sons of the eastern gentry had to pass
through the examinations. Thus, there were differences in education and
outlook between both groups which continued long after the death of the
empress. In addition, the eastern gentry, who supported the empress Wu
and later the empress Wei, were closely associated with the foreign
merchants of western Asia and the Buddhist Church to which they adhered.
In gratitude for help from the Buddhists, the empress Wu endowed them
with enormous sums of money, and tried to make Buddhism a sort of state
religion. A similar development had taken place in the Toba and also in
the Sui period. Like these earlier rulers, the empress Wu seems to have
aimed at combining spiritual leadership with her position as