B6C

3. All right, I'm going out on a limb here. In OTL, we'd be about 65 years into the Northern Song dynasty. The formation of a Turkish state in Transoxiana in the mid-second century, however, is going to affect China by the beginning of the third -- Turkish irredentism will be greater, if nothing else. I'm guessing that the changes will be enough to butterfly the Song out. Instead, the dynasty furthest from the Turks -- the Liao -- will unite northern China around SE 215 [987 CE], giving the Five Dynasties time to stretch into seven. The process of unification in southern China will be slower due to the need to defend the northwest frontier against Turkish invasion and will be driven more from within; by SE 225 [997 CE], the Ten Kingdoms will resolve themselves into three, with Wuyue being the strongest. One or the other will eventually unify China, although there's always the danger that the Turkish mercenaries that all the Chinese kingdoms are using by Benjamin's time will stage a coup.

I'm not sure how many of the Song cultural changes will happen in the Submission Timeline. The decline of the aristocracy was already well under way during the interregnum and will probably continue. The process of bureaucratization also began under the Tang, although it may not proceed as fast with government on a smaller scale. The wars in the north will still bring an influx of population, and advanced agricultural methods, to the southern kingdoms. I'd like the artistic and literary flowering of the early Song period to happen, but I'm not sure -- on the one hand, court poetry was important during the interregnum, but on the other, the conditions might not be right to create a class of scholar-artists. There are four Chinese kingdoms at this point, though, and they might develop different artistic schools.

I'm going to need some help with China. This isn't an area of the world that I know well, and I really don't feel qualified to predict what will happen next. I'd like some knowledgeable criticism -- and yes, Carlos, this means you.

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