To these dangers from abroad threatening the Later Liang state internal troubles were added.  Chu Ch’uean-chung’s dynasty was one of the three Chinese dynasties that have ever come to power through a popular rising.  He himself was of peasant origin, and so were a large part of his subordinates and helpers.  Many of them had originally been independent peasant leaders; others had been under Huang Ch’ao.  All of them were opposed to the gentry, and the great slaughter of the gentry of the capital, shortly before the beginning of Chu’s rule, had been welcomed by Chu and his followers.  The gentry therefore would not co-operate with Chu and preferred to join the Turk Li K’o-yung.  But Chu could not confidently rely on his old comrades.  They were jealous of his success in gaining the place they all coveted, and were ready to join in any independent enterprise as opportunity offered.  All of them, moreover, as soon as they were given any administrative post, busied themselves with the acquisition of money and wealth as quickly as possible.  These abuses not only ate into the revenues of the state but actually produced a common front between the peasantry and the remnants of the gentry against the upstarts.

In 917, after Li K’o-yung’s death, the Sha-t’o Turks beat off an attack from the Kitan, and so were safe for a time from the northern menace.  They then marched against the Liang state, where a crisis had been produced in 912 after the murder of Chu Ch’uean-chung by one of his sons.  The Liang generals saw no reason why they should fight for the dynasty, and all of them went over to the enemy.  Thus the “Later T’ang dynasty” (923-936) came into power in North China, under the son of Li K’o-yung.

The dominant element at this time was quite clearly the Chinese gentry, especially in western and central China.  The Sha-t’o themselves must have been extraordinarily few in number, probably little more than 100,000 men.  Most of them, moreover, were politically passive, being simple soldiers.  Only the ruling family and its following played any active part, together with a few families related to it by marriage.  The whole state was regarded by the Sha-t’o rulers as a sort of family enterprise, members of the family being placed in the most important positions.  As there were not enough of them, they adopted into the family large numbers of aliens of all nationalities.  Military posts were given to faithful members of Li K’o-yung’s or his successor’s bodyguard, and also to domestic servants and other clients of the family.  Thus, while in the Later Liang state elements from the peasantry had risen in the world, some of these neo-gentry reaching the top of the social pyramid in the centuries that followed, in the Sha-t’o state some of its warriors, drawn from the most various peoples, entered the gentry class through their personal relations with the ruler.  But in spite of all this the bulk of the officials came once more from the Chinese.  These educated